We started with that buffet again...


After which, our first objective was Palm Jumeirah, the famous palm-shaped extension that they've built out into the sea (the signposts point to "Fronds D-F" and suchlike, which must make for interesting addresses). Developers are actually in the process of building another palm on the coast further south; called Jebel Ali, this one will be even bigger...

The attraction of Palm Jumeirah was twofold: Sea (which we've not seen since our trip to Miri); and a monorail (our first since Kitakyushu).

To get there, we took the bus. (Buses are male/female segregated, with women at the front and men at the back; it was interesting watching tourists failing to figure that out...)

It was quite a long journey (well over an hour). But interesting. You go past the QE2, now a hotel (it looks strangely small, compared with the monstrous liners you come across now); and an extraordinary number of building sites, manned by vast teams of workers (seriously, when will this construction end...?); and trim suburban buildings, mostly housing shops or offices.



Once off the bus, you make your way to the monorail station through a multi-storey carpark (a little bizarre, this), but you are cheered to find that your advanced age has scored you another half-price ticket... And then you ride from the root of the palm to its apex:











We didn't stay that long. We had a hot walk by the sea...


...and a cold coffee in Cold Stone Creamery, which has a rather striking decor:


And then we caught the monorail back to the carpark, across the road from which we picked up a taxi to go to the Dubai Mall.


Perhaps Dubai's most famous icon is the Burj Khalifa, seen here from the side of the mall:


We'd actually planned to go up the tower this time. We'd even decided to splash out on the tickets that get you all the way to the 148th floor. But the atmosphere has been very murky since we got here, a little murkier with each succeeding day, in fact. It would be frustrating, we thought, to spend all that money, and see nothing but silhouettes... So we decided to postpone that experience for a future, clearer occasion.

The mall is very cool, though -- and vast:







Home on the metro, in our different compartments, feeling we'd had a reasonable introduction to modern Dubai.