We went back to Dubai for a few days after our cruise. We spent one night in a hotel near the Mall of Emirates. It was fun wandering around the mall until check-in. Henry bought Harry Potter playing cards. We checked out Ski Dubai but decided not to try it out this time.
Our hotel was near exotic rental car shops. The boys were in heaven walking past the fancy cars. Our main goal that day was to do laundry. We had almost nothing left to wear after our seven-day cruise.
The following day we took a taxi to Atlantis. We arrived at 8 am because we could access the Atlantis water park on the day of check-in and enter the park an hour early. Aquaventure is the largest water park in the world with 105 waterslides. We had about three hours at the park with no lines before it got busy.
We tried out the wave rider first. I was hesitant, but it turned out to be fun. One ride called Leap of Faith is a straight drop-down. I did not want to do it, but then I realized that if I want to teach my boys to do things that make them uncomfortable, I have to show them that I am willing to do things that make me uncomfortable. So we all did it, and it was not as scary as I thought.
Lucas and Henry spent 10 hours at Aquaventure. Michael and I hung in for about 6 hours, and then we checked into our hotel room and enjoyed afternoon tea in the Imperial Club (we upgraded for the experience).
We all met up for a happy hour and dinner at the Imperial Club. After dinner, Lucas and Henry went to the kids club. They said it was lame. It was supposed to be a Gaga ball tournament, but Lucas and Henry said the counselors played by different rules.
We had a gorgeous view of the Palms from our balcony. We enjoyed the view before passing out from our very full day.
We checked out the next day but hung around the hotel until the afternoon. We went to the pool and the beach. We played arcade games, and Lucas and Henry won 1300 tickets. It was challenging for Lucas and Henry to choose prizes at the ticket counter. They ended up getting mostly candy since we do not have room for things in our luggage.
We also visited the Aquarium. It is a small aquarium, and you can see the best part of it from the lobby of the hotel but we got free access to it by staying in the hotel.
We had a fun time at Atlantis, but it’s not my preferred type of accommodation. It feels like being in a gilded cage. Everything is beautiful, but there are so many rules. There are people every 20 feet telling you where to go and what you can and cannot do. If money was no object, I would not choose to spend a lot of time in fancy hotels like this.
We took the monorail out of the Palms and went to a hotel by the airport. When we exited the monorail we did not find a lot of taxis. We got into a black taxi car, even though we read those are about 75% more expensive than the beige taxi cars. We immediately regretted that decision as we saw his meter (which was an app on his phone) go up quickly.
We adjusted our plans. Instead of the driver taking us to our hotel, we had him drop us off at the train station a few miles from the monorail station. We took the train to our hotel, which saved us a lot of money. Fun fact: the trains in Dubai have cars just for women and children. We entered the train in the family car, and the women all started laughing and pointing at Michael. We thought we got on the wrong train but realized Michael needed to move over one car.
We only had time for dinner because we had a 7 am flight to Egypt the next day. A new country and a new continent for all of us!
