Final day Dubai!

After we headed back into the city from our desert excursion, we decided to to check out the Dubai mall and the aquarium inside of it! It was huge!!! The whole outside of the main tunnel can be seen from just walking around the mall and it was crowded with people trying to snap pictures and get a free look at all the fish.

Needing a few hours to kill we bought tickets and headed in. The first part of it is that huge tunnel. You walk through it and are surrounded by marine life! It was like being underwater. 

There were loads of scary sharks!

And some amazing specimens of fish like this awesome leopard sting ray!

After our walk through the tunnel we had to walk upstairs and enter the rest of the aquarium. The tickets we had purchased had a behind the scenes tour included so we got to check out the fish nurseries, veterinary clinic, and the feeding tank! 

Baby shark pods-- when the light would change behind these eggs you could actually see the tiny baby sharks moving inside of them! It was wild!

Baby Jelly Fish!

Stella even got to feed the crazy fish! They were huge and wild as soon as the food went in the water!

Once our behind the scenes tour was over we headed into he rest of the aquarium and zoo. 

There were some really awesome fish on display-- these are archer fish and they spit water everywhere! They were really interesting to see!

They had so many different kinds of jelly fish! 

And we saw these cool sea dragons! 

And these gorgeous star fish!

And then at the very end we saw this monster giant crocodile! The female is large, but the male is absolutely like something out of a horror movie! This picture doesn't do them justice AT ALL! For reference I was up on a balcony overlooking them about 12 feet in the air. These guys were absolute monsters. The king croc is over 5 meters long (16 feet) and weighs 750 kg (1653 pounds).

I would have to say that the wildest thing of all that we saw the whole day was this crazy specimen...

After finishing the aquarium we grabbed a bite of lunch and then headed to the airport. The mall is right by the Burj Khalifa so here it is up close. We all were sort of underwhelmed! When we first arrived in Dubai and the top looked like it was in the clouds it was pretty impressive, but up close it really didn't look that tall! 

We made our way back to the airport and enjoyed our hour and a half nap back to Bahrain!

Overall it was a great trip! My overall impression of the UAE is that its opulent and over the top, which is cool, but its sort of lacking something. Everything is bright and shiny and new and thats cool, but I think we all missed wandering around a dusty, crowded souk, or the old middle eastern vibe. The cities were neat to see and the buildings were gorgeous and it was interesting to know that it's changed so much even just in Christophers time in the Navy and will continue to grow and change even now, but it just lacked... depth and character.