Today we had an all-day tour of the modern city. At the start of the day we did not really understand what that would entail. But by the end of the day we would have been to the 125th floor of the worlds tallest building, discovered the best acquarium we have ever experienced, had lunch in a boat on the 54th floor, and been closeup and personal with Gentoo and King penguins.

The day started with a walk through some of the Dubai Mall. We had to enter the mall because the entry to the Burj Khalifa is inside the mall. From the mall courtyard one gets a good view of Burj Khalifa across the water feature where last night we watched the fountain display. Inside the mall there is a spectacular multistorey water fall with stainless steel statues of men diving, suspended infront of the water. The mall apparenty has 1200 shops and two separate food courts.

The trip to the observation floor of the Burj Kalifa was an amazing experience. The elevator traveled at 2 floors per second without giving any real sensation of movement. Once on the observation deck one was looking down on 50-60 storey buildings as if they were childrens toys. At a distance to the south we could see the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel famous because it has only two storey suites and it is rated 7-stars.

After our experience of BK we were off to the Dubai Aquarium which just also happens to be inside Dubai Mall. It was difficult to photograph the exhibits in the aquarium so some of the more spectacular displays/residents like sharks and stingrays are unfortunately missing. But below you will get a glimpse of Gentoo penguins swimming and Nina's favourite the Weedy Sea Dragon

Then to our surprise the tour included lunch for two at Ce la vie.

After lunch, and no doubt as an encourgement for us to visit Dubai again, we headed south to Dubai Marina, took a drive around the artificial Palm Jumeirah and the two Atlantis Resorts.

At this point we should have been done for the day except that when Nina saw the Gentoo penguins at the Aquarium she got thinking about the information she had seen about King Penguins at a place in Dubai where snow skiing was possible. Did you get that, snow skiiing in a desert!

Well it turns out that skiing takes place at the Mall of the Emirates so after all the scheduled visits our guide and driver agreed to take us there to see if we could arrange a penguin visit. And of course as you can see in the photos below we did indeed get to meet a Gentoo penguin, and also a King penguin. Because we were the only two people in the session we were allowed to touch and feed these wonderful animals.

Interesting fact. These Penguins have a fast metabolism. They can process their food in 20 minutes. So 20 minutes after one feeds them they are pooping out the residual of that meal.

It was a great day.