February 27th found us on an adventure to The Green Planet and then on to the MOE (Mall Of Emirates).
First picture of the day is of some more interesting architecture.
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| It seriously looks like they are building some kind of boat looking thing on the top of those two buildings. They had a building similar to this in Abu Dhabi. |
The Green Planet was a really cool place!! And as with everything in Dubai, it is home to the
world's largest indoor, man-made, life-sustaining tree!!
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| You enter the building on the very bottom level in what appears to be an underground cave. This view is from the very bottom looking up to the top. |
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| This mammoth indoor, man-made, life-sustaining tree is 82 feet tall. It is built in a bio-dome and is meant to imitate life inside a rain forest. |
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| The building has an "origami" look to it and the purpose for that design is to allow the natural sunlight in so it can flood the tree with the light that one would get inside an actual rain forest. There are five levels to this building. At the very bottom where you begin, there is an aquarium which you walk under in order to get to the elevator which takes you up to the very top of the tree, where....... |
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| You begin your journey through the levels of a rain forest tree. |
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| There are over 3,000 species of plants and animals making it a hybrid of zoo and botanical garden. The bird was being shy with me, which is a normal act for him apparently. |
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| With patience, I was able to get a photo of him. |
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| Thankfully, not all of the animals or insects are "free range". They kept the creepy crawlies in cages. |
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| This is the Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantula. I'm glad he's in there and not roaming around. |
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| I am up at the very top looking down towards the bottom. |
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| They even had a waterfall. |
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| And a walk-through tunnel in the middle of the "tree" |
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| They even had a hanging bridge. |
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| You can also feed and pet the animals. |
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| I'm thinking that these are the things nightmares are made of. |
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| That has got to be the biggest beetle I have ever seen. |
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| Believe it or not, but there are two chameleons in there. I dare you to guess where the second one is. |
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| The pathway that they had you walk down was really neat. You got to feel like you were apart of the rain forest. |
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| These caution cones cracked me up. |
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| oh yes, then there were the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. |
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| I put my brave panties on and held one. It was weird. |
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| And Centipedes |
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| That they let you touch. They didn't let us hold them. It was interesting, almost like touching a snake except the exoskeleton is hard. |
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| That brown fuzzy thing behind the tree is a Sloth. It was sleeping so I wasn't able to get a good picture of it :( |
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| And of course there were monkey's |
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| We were only about half way down by this point. The place is HUGE!! |
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| Thorny Stick insects. |
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| Which, by the way........ |
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| are HUGE!! |
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| Walking under the waterfall. |
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| Almost back to the bottom. Looking over a railing into the aquarium. |
After The Green Planet, we drove over to the MOE (Mall of Emirates) to have lunch and see the famous "Ski Dubai." On our drive to the Mall, I won the licence plate again........
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| Number 73....not royal family, but someone paid a pretty penny to get that low of a number. Who ever it is is really loaded. |
And now we come to the Mall of Emirates and "Ski Dubai." Some interesting tidbits about The Mall of Emirates. There are 630 retail outlets, over 100 restaurants and cafes, 80 luxury stores, 250 flagship stores (whatever those are,) the ski park, a 500 seat capacity Dubai community theater and arts center, and Magic Planet which (not surprisingly) is one of the largest family entertainment centers in Dubai. At Magic Planet you can, play in one of the two entertainment zones (one for children and one for young adults), play 10 pin bowling on one of the 12 bowling lanes, shoot some pool, play on one of the 180 amusement machines, ride the carousel, ride the racing simulators, play on the jumping star (not sure what that is), ride the bumper cars, or ride a roller coaster called the "Robocoaster" which is a two seat person ride which is Unique to the Middle East, and ride the XD Dark Ride which is a "7D adventure with 3D movie graphics, and 4D effects, including, motion, wind, and light.
And now for "Ski Dubai." I have some videos that I will post at the end. I had to break them up into smaller chunks to get them to fit on my blog
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| Some interesting facts about Ski Dubai: There are 5.6 acres dedicated to this indoor ski resort |
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| Bumper cars. |
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| Twin bobsled runs |
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| The ski slopes take up about 3/4 of an acre. There are five runs on the ski slopes. The longest run being 1,300 feet with a fall of 190 feet. And apparently it also has the world's first indoor Black Diamond Run. |
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| They have a giant ball run where you can get into those huge blow up balls and bounce your way down the slopes. And that building on the right, that's the five start hotel, Kempinski. It has 20 "stunning" Aspen Chalets directly overlooking the "incredible" snowy slopes of Ski Dubai. |
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| It has a snow cavern with "interactive experiences." And apparently you can check out the whole ski area on Google Maps |
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| There are sledding hills. |
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| The have what they call the "Snow Bullet" which is the world's first indoor sub-zero zip line. You ride 52 feet above the surface and it is 492 feet long. |
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| There is about 6,000 tons of snow. |
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| They keep the temperature around 30 degrees year round.....That's got to be one HEFTY power bill!! |
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| Full capacity is 1,500 people. |
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| Oh, and they have a Penguin encounter as well. So, there's that. |
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| And this is what they offer and the prices. Those numbers are all in Dirham's (Dubai money). To figure out the cost in US dollars you divide by 3.67. |
And now for the videos I took.
On the drive home, we came across some camels. Aaron slowed down so I could get some pictures.
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| You can tell that these aren't wild camels because of the rope tied around it's front feet. That's to keep them from running away. |
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| And more winning at the licence plate game. This one is kind of confusing. If you are rich enough to have that low of plate number, why drive a Sequoia. Don't get me wrong, Sequoia's are nice and I wouldn't mind having one, especially after driving my in-law's, but one would think that low of a plate number would want something snazzier. I have to wonder if the letter L has anything to do with it. I did notice that a lot of plates had letters on them, and the other low number plates I saw didn't have letters on the plates. Maybe he's upper-middle class but still wants to show off, who knows!! |
Come back tomorrow where we venture to The Dubai Museum.
