Dubai - shopping - Eat - Explore

You can’t come to Dubai and not shop – I can’t think of a city more associated with shopping! However, a word of caution – everything is super expensive.

We visited Dubai Mall - the world's largest shopping mall! It has 1,200 shops and is over 13 million square feet (more than 50 football fields) and also home to the Dubai Aquarium, a luxury hotel, 22 cinema screens and 120 restaurants / cafes.

It opened in 2009 and now has more than 750,000 weekly visitors - more than New York City and other big leisure destinations, like Niagara Falls and Times Square!

However, it was largely full of western brands (and overpriced compared to home). It also (randomly) has an ice rink inside!

And an impressive water wall.

and a gold iPhone!

We wandered outside and watched the regular water show outside the mall.

It was a little underwhelming – I think the evening performance is meant to be better though.

Then we admired the view of Burj Kalifa, the tallest building, before heading up there for Afternoon Tea - read my review of the experience here.

As part of our shopping day, we also visited Dubai’s souks.

First the ‘Gold Souk’ – a traditional market of over 300 stores that trade almost exclusively in jewellery. Apparently there's usually around 10 tons of gold in the souk at any time!!

Honestly it was smelly and stressful! The place was dripping in bright yellow gold and full of touts who wouldn’t leave you alone.

We found a store that our taxi driver had recommended and tried on a few items.

But the colouring of the gold didn’t suit my skin colour at all, plus a lot of the styles were too ‘over-the-top’ for me. Then of course the price – I’d thought gold was ‘cheap’ in Dubai but definitely not!