Every city has its list of things to do. Dubai has a list of things that, once you experience them, make every other city’s list feel slightly ordinary. This is not about the Burj Khalifa or the gold souk – those are famous and they deserve to be. This is about the experiences that stop you mid-sentence when you try to describe them to someone who has never been, because you realise halfway through the explanation that what you are saying sounds completely made up.

Dive Into the World’s Deepest Pool

Deep Dive Dubai holds a Guinness World Record for the deepest swimming pool on the planet – 60 metres straight down, filled with 14 million litres of fresh water, and hiding an entire sunken city at the bottom for divers to explore. There are submerged apartments, a games room, a spiral staircase, and a functioning billiards table sitting sixty metres below the surface. You can watch other divers through panoramic windows while having a meal inside the poolside restaurant. It is one of the most surreal environments on Earth and it is in Dubai, naturally.

Swim in a Pool on the 50th Floor of a Palm-Shaped Island

Aura Skypool sits on the 50th floor of a tower on Palm Jumeirah, making it the world’s highest 360-degree infinity pool. You float in warm water with the Arabian Gulf below you, the Dubai skyline ahead of you, and absolutely nothing between you and the horizon except glass. At sunset the whole thing turns gold. There is a bar. Of course there is a bar.

Watch a Water Show Inside a Purpose-Built Aquatic Theatre

La Perle by Dragone at Al Habtoor City is the kind of show that makes you question what is physically possible. Created by the founder of Cirque du Soleil, it is performed inside a custom-built theatre with a 2,700 square metre aquatic stage that floods and drains during the performance. Acrobats dive from 25-metre heights, motorbikes are ridden up vertical walls, and the entire show blurs the line between theatre, circus, and something that has no name yet. It runs every night and it has no equivalent anywhere in the world.

Ski Down a Mountain Inside a Shopping Mall

Ski Dubai at Mall of the Emirates is a full indoor ski resort – five runs, a black diamond slope, a snow park, real snow, real cold, and resident penguins you can meet up close. Outside the window is 45-degree desert heat. Inside, it is minus one. You can arrive in flip flops, rent everything at the door, and be skiing within twenty minutes. It remains one of the most gloriously absurd things Dubai has ever built, which is saying something.

Run a Marathon Inside a Shopping Mall

The Dubai Mallathon turns six of the city’s biggest malls into running tracks every morning from 6am to 10am during summer. Over 40,000 people participated last year. A full 42-kilometre marathon was completed entirely indoors. A Guinness World Record was broken. Nobody bats an eye, because this is Dubai and turning a shopping mall into a marathon venue before breakfast is simply the kind of solution this city reaches for when the weather does not cooperate.

There are cities that offer you things to do. And then there is Dubai, which offers you things to do that you will spend the next ten years bringing up in conversation, always starting with the same three words: you will not believe this.

Contributed by GuestPosts.biz