The many, many malls of Dubai

Dubai is home to some enormous malls (and will soon include the world's two largest). Garry and I visited at least three of them simply to experience their size and scale, while grabbing a few bargains. On Christmas Eve we visited our first mall, Festival City, Dubai's newest retail complex. It opened in March and contains a staggering 550 shops, 100 restaurants and cafes and a 12-screen multiplex cinema.

The mall itself is part of an enormous construction site extending four kilometres along the banks of Dubai Creek. The site includes seven hotels, a new IKEA superstore and an exhibition centre. The mall's centre piece is a curving artificial canal. Visitors can obtain a free ride on kitsch mini dhow boats. The whole scene reminded me of an artificial canal in Las Vegas that wraps itself around the Venetian, a hotel modeled on the scenic highlights of Venice.


On Christmas Day we visited a second mall, The Mall of the Emirates, currently Dubai’s largest. This mall’s feature drawcard is Ski Dubai, an indoor ski field covering 22,500m². The longest ski run is more than 400 metres long, dropping more than 60 vertical metres. The scene can be viewed in shirt-sleeve comfortable through a bank of floor to ceiling windows that line the final hundred metres of the ski slope. Here we could see children on toboggans and snowboarders going through their paces.


In keeping with the festive season, the mall also had an enormous gingerbread mountain village on display. I’ve never seen so much icing, cake and candy crafted in such a spectacular edible structure. We came back for a second day of shopping later in the week. Ski Dubai continued to capture my imagination. There’s just something magic about a giant snow fridge on stilts, sitting in the middle of a hot, lifeless desert.