Around the World. Dubai
After a half day exploring Sydney (one of the coolest cities in the world), I headed to Dubai. The flight wasn't very comfortable, and the promised Emirates Airbus didn't materialize either. Oh well.
After an hour of running around what had to be one of the worst-designed airports in the world, I took the metro into the city. The automated metro ticket machine wasn't working, so in order to buy a ticket one needed to see an agent, who then proceeded to go to the machine and retrieve the ticket manually. This was a common theme in Dubai - a sleek, modern exterior, with chaos and shoddiness underneath.
All of my concerns evaporated, though, once I stepped off the metro and saw it.
It. Burj Khalifa - the tallest building (indeed structure) in the world. One of the reasons I travel is for the "oh shit" moments, and this was one of them. Burj Khalifa defied reality - it was unfathomably high and unrealistically modern. It looked like something that belonged in a science fiction movie, or a futuristic video game. It literally pierced the sky.
My whole day in Dubai was basically spend wondering around Burj Khalifa. It was as if it had a magnetic pull on me - I had to keep looking at it to make sure it wasn't a dream, or some photoshopped reality. First, I had delicious hummus, mint tea and hookah in the shadow of the tower, in a great Lebanese place - not a bad layover lunch. Then I went inside and paid a ridiculous amount of money for a "VIP" ticket to the top - the regular tickets were sold out for a week. I had to do it - and the view was, again, unreal. Huge skyscrapers seemed like little toys, somewhere down below. After reemerging, I had Turkish coffee and sweets for a nightcap, and then headed back to the airport past half-finished skyscrapers, empty construction sites, and tangles of wires on the ground. I would look up constantly, though - just to make sure the Burj was still there.