Tallest building and longest queues

Getting into the Burj Khalifa requires going down to the underground part of the building and then entering a mess of disorganisation. In common with hundreds of other people we ended up queuing forever only to be told when we got to the front of the line that it had been unnecessary. It was deeply frustrating.

Burj Khalifa light show.

The view from the main viewing area on the Burj is pretty impressive. There is a viewing area even further up but it is time-limited and spending another $600 for 30-minutes was more than we could stomach. I could be wrong, but I’m not convinced we missed much.

We were already aware that we were on, and so would not be seeing, the main landmark in Dubai. Many of the other possible things to see were lost in a haze of sand and dust, but looking down certainly gave a very clear impression of being on the tallest building in the World. And we were almost half a kilometre up – which is pretty wild when you think about it.

Burj Khalifa looking down.

Like much of Dubai, the visit to the ‘Top of the World” at the Burj Khalifa is more marketing glitz than reality. Expensive, disorganised, and not a lot to see. But in spite of all that, we stood a long way up that tallest building ever constructed by humans and that’s pretty cool.

Others might feel differently and that wouldn’t surprise me: The real highlight of the day for me was the four of us playing foosball, eating burgers and arguing politics into the night.

For those who might come after: Buy your tickets online but then ignore anyone who tells you have to print them out – including what’s written on the tickets. Do not join the ‘online tickets’ queue, just go into the ‘tickets’ queue and everyone will happily scan the tickets from your phone.  Do that and save 90 minutes in a line.

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