Day 12 - Golden Marina Walk

Breakfast at the Crowne Plaza is always a highlight of the annual holiday. The buffet includes Indian, European and American foods. Rather too much. We stick to five courses - don't want to overdo it. 

After a massive feed its time for the pool. Some 6 hours by the pool in glorious 40 degree heat. The perfect way to unwind. 

With the sun setting and temperature droping, it makes it more accessible to get out and about for an adventure. If you attempt to walk outside during the day you really can't last more then 5 minutes. 

We travelled in Gold class today. All public transport here has three classes. Gold (twice the price), Women only and everyone else. In all our years visiting we've never travelled gold. Today we did. 

You have your own private cabin up front, plush seats with no visibility of the others. It's an odd way to travel when you know how multi-cultural and packed the rest of the metro carriages are. Taking advantage of the class we headed to Dubai Marina to connect with the newly opened luas/Dubai Tram. They are made by the company who supplied the Dublin tram, even the bell is the same. 

The tram has 11 stops and one loop. We travelled the full length and the loop twice by accident. We had plush leather seats up on gold. Quite the treat. 

We did stop for a ramble around The Walk at Dubai Marina. A facinating man made Maria enclosed by crazy high apartment towers. This is where the internationally workers live. It's exotic yet residential. 

The Maria Mall was our next destination. We had never visited before thinking it was too small. But it's massive. Catering for the local residents it's full of UK brands like Waitrose and WH Smith. 

One restaurant was like a sushi place, with a rotating belt. But rather then fish you had cup cakes. Yum.

Taking the tram in the wrong direction we enjoyed gold class travel some more before finally connecting to the metro and onto the Mall of the Emiriates for some late night shopping (around 10pm local time). 

We finally got back for midnight, tired after our little Golden Dubai Maria adventure.