AYA Universe is what happens when a very well-funded creative studio decides the art museum is dead and replaces it with a video game you can walk inside. No paintings. No velvet ropes. Twelve themed zones, floor-to-ceiling projection mapping, responsive…
I hit the Path of Umbrellas at 4pm on a February Tuesday and stood there counting. Eventually I gave up at around 500 — the umbrellas kept going. The whole ceiling of the walkway is suspended colour, hung at staggered…
I was eating a paratha at the India pavilion when I realised I’d been at Global Village for four hours and hadn’t even crossed to the Africa zone. The park is bigger than it looks — 75 national pavilions, over…
The giraffe leaned down from behind the fence and its tongue — a 45-centimetre, blue-black, prehensile tongue — wrapped around the carrot in my daughter’s hand with the precision of a surgical instrument. She shrieked with delight. The giraffe chewed…
Twenty-two strangers strapped into airline-style seats around a circular table. A crane lifted us 50 metres into the air. A chef in the centre started plating a three-course dinner while we dangled above the Dubai Marina skyline with nothing between…
A sloth reached out and touched my hand. Slowly — because everything a sloth does is slow — its three-toed grip wrapped around my index finger with surprising gentleness. We held hands for about 10 seconds. Then it yawned, revealing…
The lobby doors opened and the first thing I saw was gold. Not gold accents, not gold trim — gold everywhere. Gold columns, gold leaf on the ceiling, gold balustrades on the escalators. The atrium soared 180 metres above me,…
The instructor tapped me twice on the shoulder. That was the signal. I was sitting in the open door of a plane at 13,000 feet, my legs dangling over the Palm Jumeirah, and a man I’d met 30 minutes ago…
My girlfriend grabbed my arm so hard she left fingerprints. We were sitting in a harness 150 metres above the Arabian Gulf, attached to a speedboat by a rope, with the entire Dubai Marina skyline spread out behind us like…
The security guard at the Mall of the Emirates looked at my shorts and t-shirt and shook his head. “You’ll need the jacket,” he said, pointing toward the rental desk. Ten minutes later I was wearing a full ski outfit…
The blue morpho landed on my daughter’s shoulder and opened its wings. The iridescent blue was so intense it looked like someone had photoshopped it onto reality. She froze. “Don’t move,” I whispered. She didn’t move for four full minutes.…
My 10-year-old nephew ranked every theme park he’s ever visited. Dubai’s MOTIONGATE came third, behind Universal Studios and ahead of Disneyland Paris. I asked him why. “Because you can ride a roller coaster inside a Smurfs movie.” He’s not wrong.…
A woman dove from a platform 25 meters above the stage, plunged through a hole in the floor that wasn’t there two seconds ago, and disappeared into a pool of water that had appeared from nowhere. The audience gasped. I…
A shark swam over my head. Not a metaphorical shark — an actual 3-meter sand tiger shark, gliding through 10 million liters of water while I stood in a glass tunnel wondering whether acrylic really is as strong as they…
The Can-Am had 192 horsepower. I know this because the instructor told me right before handing me the keys and pointing at a wall of sand that was definitely too steep to drive up. “Full throttle,” he said. “Don’t brake…
The waiter placed a plate of grilled lamb in front of me while the Burj Khalifa’s light show flickered through the window behind his shoulder. A live oud player was tuning up in the corner. The boat hadn’t even left…
The pilot banked left and the Palm Jumeirah tilted into view below us. The entire man-made island — trunk, fronds, crescent — laid out like a map. Except it wasn’t a map. It was real, and I was 500 meters…
Someone in Dubai’s planning department looked at the skyline and thought: “What if we built a 150-meter-tall picture frame so travelers could photograph both halves of the city at once?” And then they actually did it. The Dubai Frame is…
I looked down through the glass floor and my knees buckled. Two hundred meters below, tiny cars crawled along Sheikh Zayed Road. My brain knew the glass was solid. My legs disagreed. That’s Sky Views Observatory — Dubai’s second-most-terrifying viewing…
The saffron seller held out a tiny spoon. “Smell,” he said. I leaned in and the scent hit me like a warm blanket — earthy, floral, and completely unlike the powdered stuff I buy at home for $15 a jar.…
The captain said “hold on” and then hit the throttle. The bow lifted, the engine roared, and suddenly we were skimming across the Gulf at 50 knots with the Burj Al Arab getting bigger by the second. A speedboat tour…
I’ve seen a lot of beautiful buildings in my life. The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque made me forget all of them. White marble, 82 domes, 1,000 columns, and a carpet so vast it took 1,200 artisans two years to weave.…
I screamed. Full volume, no dignity, arms flailing. The slide dropped me through a clear tube surrounded by sharks, and for about three seconds I was eye-to-eye with a hammerhead through a sheet of acrylic. That’s Aquaventure. Dubai’s waterpark doesn’t…
I’ve been to a lot of museums. Most of them are about the past. This one is about what comes next — and it’s housed in what might be the most beautiful building on the planet. The Museum of the…
I’ll admit it — I used to be a hop-on hop-off snob. The open-top buses crawling through European cities full of sunburned travelers with audio guides? Not for me. Then I tried one in Dubai. And I get it now.…
Fifteen dollars. That’s what I paid to spend two hours on a yacht in Dubai Marina. I keep repeating it because I still don’t believe it. The yacht had three decks, a swimming platform, cushioned sun loungers, and a crew…
I’ve done a lot of stupid things on vacation. Renting a jet ski in Dubai and pointing it at the Burj Al Arab at full throttle might be the best one. The water was flat, the sky was impossibly blue,…
The driver grinned, deflated the tires to half pressure, and said “hold on.” That was the last calm moment of the evening. For the next twenty minutes, our Toyota Land Cruiser carved through red sand dunes at angles I didn’t…
I almost didn’t go up. Standing at the base of the Burj Khalifa, neck craned back so far it hurt, I thought — do I really need to spend $43 to see Dubai from above? I could see the skyline…
Discover Abu Dhabi’s top sights, including Louvre Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Zayed Mosque, on this private tour from Dubai that blends culture, history, and modernity.