Dubai - Malls

I went to two malls in Dubai. Lets start with the Mall of the Emirates. The Mall of the Emirates is a luxury mall down near Jumeirah. Its huge, all high-end stores. A nice movie theater with 12 screens. A bunch of restaurants. A big Tower store where I picked up a couple PS3 games. Oh, and a goddamn skiing resort. The ski run from the outside looks like a huge silver worm like structure extending from one end of the mall up twisting up into the sky. From the inside it looks like a little ski village covered in snow. Its cold in the ski area, winter coat cold.


Okay, now lets talk about the Dubai Mall. The Dubai Mall surrounds the Burj Kalifa and is, of course, the largest mall in the world. Its really big, just like the building it surrounds. Again, its a high-end mall filled with high-end brands, an amazing brand new theater, lots of restaurants. Its mostly American brands, American chain restaurants. But, most of Dubai is. Its like a brand new city in the US, full of chain restaurants and new construction. Kind of like Scottsdale, Arizona, but on the beach. Its weirdly ironic that the middle east has built their own little USA right south of Iraq.
But, how embarrassing for the Dubai mall, there is no ski slope. What's that? Oh, right, there's a hundred foot deep aquarium running through the center of it like a huge column, filled with 40,000 fish, including sharks. That you can scuba dive in. But its so deep you need to be a certified diver. Oh, Dubai...