The worlds biggest mall, designed to make you feel poor

Friday morning we ventured over to the Dubai Mall, promoted as the world's largest.   To give you an indication, it boasts five floors, an enormous indoor aquarium, and pretty much every luxury store you can think of, and a lot you can't.  My first inkling that this was not your mothers mall was the Harry Winston jewelry store.  Harry Winston, as in the store that Hollywood starlets, with millions to their name, BORROW stuff from to wear to the Oscars.   Here that kind of bling hangs in the window as, we presume, people actually BUY IT!   Disturbing thought,  but when you'd see the sheiks, with their wives (and we do mean that in the plural,  at least sometimes) you remember that yes, there are people in the world who can buy a multi-million dollar bauble and not think twice about it. 

So we wandered the mall, more than we wanted as we got lost more than once. Though, with money comes tech.  This mall has the coolest "You are here" type info boards you've ever seen.  Since there are a zillion stores, restaurants and attractions, they need a robust way to get people around.  So each kiosk, the size of a Buick - Arabic on one side, English on the other - is fully interactive.  You type in the first letter of what you want, scroll through til you find it, tap and it literally lights up an X where you are, then tells you both verbally and visually if you need to go up or down a floor, where the escalators are, and draws a red line right to your store. 

 

Awesome, and fully useful even if you don't speak the language.  Folks of all races know what Jimmy Choo or Tiffany's is, so they know what to at least search for.  :)

 

I didn't take a lot of photos, as its hard not to capture locals and other people in them, which is considered pretty rude here.  They also have a "dress code" at the mall.  The Emirati locals are not happy with how decadent their tourists dress, they prefer below-the-knee and shoulder-covering dress at all times.  As they guide book says... "Men in shorts at the mall will be considered as having forgotten their pants"   I wore a long dress.  And Friday is jam packed with locals, as Friday & Saturday is "the weekend" here.   The people watching was beyond superb.  Women in burkas with kids in the food court!! Oh the sights I couldn't photograph to share!

Note - the whole mall does NOT look like the first couple pics, it looks more like the middle one - like a mall.  Just a very expensive one.  This area was just interesting, arabic, and somewhat lightly populated so I could take photos.   And the wall sculpture of the diving men was just too cool not to snap pics of.