We joined Louise and Phil for a farewell breakfast before waving them off on their journey back to Oman. It's been a great few days. We have really enjoyed spending time with them and we promise to visit them in Salalah before they get a chance to leave!

Simon and I then went for a swim in the hotel pool before making our way over to Dubai Mall. This is a vast, modern, shopping centre. It truly is huge and, once inside, you could be anywhere in the world. The shops, brand names, restaurant outlets etc are almost identical to those you would find anywhere else. Simon and I are not great shoppers ourselves and we are are not as impressed by wonderful shopping malls as some people might be. This is especially true as we are used to some pretty amazing shopping malls in our very own Hong Kong! One thing we have not seen in Hong Kong though is a gold ATM but they are here in Dubai Mall. Put in your credit card and you can purchase your very own gold bars just like that. How did we manage to resist such a temptation? Well, gold is quite expensive to say the least!

We made our way to the check in point for 'At the Top' and our visit to Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It certainly looks very impressive from outside, slightly reminiscent of a huge fairytale 'Sleeping Beauty' castle, and we were looking forward to going up and seeing the view from above.

After looking at a small display of facts and figures and a couple of models of the building itself we were ushered into a windowless lift which whisked us up, at great speed, to the 124th floor where we walked out onto the viewing platform. It certainly was a very interesting view from up there, even though the air was not very clear. We walked around and looked down on other very tall buildings which were far, far below us and picked out various points of interest.

We had a look round for about 20 minutes and then ... that was it! Down again in the lift, past a few more photos and our visit was over. To be honest we were mildly disappointed. The website had promised us an amazing experience and, of course it certainly was amazing to go up the tallest building in the world. However, we felt that they could have made much more of it. We have been up other tall buildings, for example the Sky City tower in Auckland, and they made the whole experience much more exciting and interactive and you came away feeling very good about the whole thing. We couldn't help feeling that this was simply a rather poorly disguised money making exercise. A feeling encouraged by the fact that they tried to get us to pay the equivalent of £50 for a fairly mediocre photograph to celebrate our experience, an honour which we declined.

We were too early to see the fountains so we set off to the nearest metro stop, some distance away. The metro can be seen everywhere as you travel round Dubai and we were really keen to travel on it. We were certainly not disappointed by this experience! It is gleaming, modern, very clean and comfortable, and also travel is very reasonably priced. We were able to buy an all day travel ticket for about £3. We travelled to Deira Creek and enjoyed a long walk down by the water, watching the boats and the cormorants. We eventually walked past the gold souk and all the way to the Hyatt hotel, a building which looked very familiar to Amanda. On going inside and finding the ice rink this confirmed her view that this used to be called the Galadari Galleria and was the building her ex and his company were building when we were living here in the 1970's. Not quite as elegant now as when it was newly opened, but definitely still standing.

Dusk was falling and we made our way back to the Dubai Mall. On our way to the fountain we passed a huge window onto a giant aquarium and paused to watch the wonderful array of fish including many sharks and rays. We noted that this window was in the Guinness Book of Records as being made from the largest sheet of acrylic in the world, and we can well believe it!

We wandered outside and watched the fountain show in which the huge array of fountains 'performed' to music and lights on a very grand scale. It drew a huge crowd and was well worth a look.

Back to the hotel after a long day seeing the sights. Back to McGettigan's bar for fish and chips, and then a nightcap in Healey's bar listening to live, late light mood music. This is the life!