Bird’s Eye View of Dubai

On my third and final day in Dubai, I decide to take a Big Bus Tour. They regularly depart from locations all over the city, and it’s easy to hop-on / hop-off if you want to spend more time exploring a certain location. Since I’m only in town for a few days, this is a way for me to get an overview of the rest of the city that I didn’t have time to properly see. Plus it’s an easy way to wind down, since I leave for the airport around 2am this evening to fly back to the States for Christmas. I can just sit back and enjoy the sights all day.

I should’ve begun early in the day to allow for more time to hop off some of the bus stops, but by the time I finish packing my bags and storing them at the hotel, it’s nearly noon. I grab a quick bite to eat and spend the rest of the day — and evening — touring Dubai on bus.

A view of the Burj Khalifa from another angle:

Depending on when people hop on or off, at times the bus is crowded and other times it’s nearly empty.

This mall is one of the main pick-up / drop-off spots.

We pass this place called Children’s City, which I can only assume is a museum for kids.

The Big Bus ticket includes a free boat ride down the Dubai Creek. My only gripe with this tour is how it’s scheduled — the departures don’t necessarily coincide with bus drop-offs, so our group has to wait around 45 minutes for the boat to depart, and then once it’s over we wait another 45 minutes for the next bus. So that’s an hour and a half of wasted time that I would’ve much rather spent at the spice souk or exploring another area, if the departures had synced up properly with the buses. Oh well.

It’s a relaxing ride up and down the river with pretty views.

If you’re not doing the cruise, I hear it’s pretty cheap to ride in one of these boats to see the Dubai Creek. Personally I didn’t love the cruise and should’ve skipped it for time, as there’s so much to see in the rest of the city.

A few more images from the rest of the afternoon’s bus tour:

Here’s the Dubai skyline at sunset:

The last part of my route is along the beach, passing several picturesque mosques.

Rather than take the bus back to my starting point, I hop off at the Burj Al Arab — the world’s only seven star hotel, which I glimpsed from Atlantis Resort the other day. The sun has gone down and I take advantage of twilight to snap photos of this epic hotel.

See that round platform near the top? It’s a golf green, where Tiger Woods once posed a few years ago when the hotel first opened.

From the Burj Al Arab, I take a taxi back to the Mall of the Emirates. I grab a quick dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (again…) and then hop aboard the Night Bus tour offered by the same company — it’s a more streamlined route from their day tour, focusing on the impressive Dubai skyline at night.

We stop at the Atlantis Resort to admire the lights:

And here’s the knock-off Chrystler Buildings, twice the number of its New York inspiration.

Dubai, you know how to impress.

Rather than complete the entire Night Bus circuit, I hop off at the Burj Khalifa hoping to score a last-minute ticket to the viewing platform…. but sadly they are sold out for the rest of the night, and I take the tram back to my hotel to kill a few hours before I leave for the airport at 2am.