The Dubai Mall

The Dubai Mall was only completed in 2008 and it is superb. You could spend a week there. Not only are there 1,200 shops, but also many other activities. There are over 100,000 visitors a day. You definitely want to go there if in the neighbourhood.

The Kinokuniya bookshop inside is also huge – I suspect it was around the same size as the Piccadilly Waterrmains which is the largest in Europe. The only thing that stopped me buying more than four books is that I have to lug them around with me for a couple more weeks.

This is a spectacular waterfall inside.

A typical section. It doesn’t look huge but There are scores of segments like this.

A must see is the Aquarium. I would say it rates above any other one I have been to. Part of what made it great is that in many of the displays, the fish are not entirely walled off – you can peer in from above.

They have 33,000 marine animals on display.

You can also photograph them from above

The turtles

They had a dozen otters or so. Hard to get a good photo with the glass.

They had three 1.5 metre crocodiles. Luckily they can’t jump the wall!

I love these fish.

And he’s so cute

Pretty spectacular coral

That is actually a squid. It is gross in real life. The main area of it pumps up and down, reminding me of the alien in Alien!

The seals having sex. Well actually play fighting but you never know!

They had penguins also.

I guess this is a crab even though it looks like a mutant spider

One of the many sharks. You can pay to get lowered in a shark cage

And another star from Jaws

When I saw that fish, I commented that it was a motherf**ker of a fish. Imagine having that on your fishing rod.

The only downside of the mall, was that I spilt a very hot pasta onto my arm while carrying it to the checkout, and let out a string of profanities that seemed to survive the translation barrier. The arm actually got mildly burnt.