Dubai is well known for its land reclamation projects that have transformed the coastline with a series of creative (though often unfinished) projects. One of the most recognizable (and completed) projects is The Palm Jumeirah, a group of man-made islands in the shape of a palm tree. At the center of the furthest island is the luxury resort Atlantis The Palm, Dubai, home of Aquaventure Water Park, recognized in October 2022 by Guiness as having the most water slides of any water park (at 50). Murt seemed to have many positive childhood memories of going to the various water parks in Dubai, so we were eager to see if it lived up to the hype. After waking up around 11am we left the house around noon to head to Aquaventure.

The water park had a very efficient design: there was a lazy river connecting lots of the major areas, so you could theoretically avoid walking around as much as possible. The big slides all originate in three towers spread across the park, and one of them, the Neptune Tower, is fed directly from the lazy river (a magic carpet device carries you up inside an inner tube, meaning you don't need to walk up any steps to access the top of the slides). Seeing as the entrance fee for the water park was already expensive enough, we did not dish out the extra money for the skip-the-line passes. After getting bored waiting in lines a couple of times, we generally tried to pick the less-popular slides that had shorter lines. In summary, the park was a lot of fun: some slides I will highlight include Zoomerango, which had us launched up at a nearly 90 degree angle and then fall back down, giving a temporary feeling of weightlessness, and Shockwave, where the inner tube is repeatedly pushed up inclines with high-powered water jets. I unfortunately do not have any photos from our time at the water park because my phone was left to stay dry in my backpack the entire time.

We stayed at Aquaventure until it closed at 5:30pm. Because the restaurants at the Atlantis resort were ridiculously overpriced, we headed to a shopping mall on another section of the palm (the trunk) to look for food. Murt expressed frustration at the poor layout of the roads here: despite being no more than 500m away from our starting point, we had to drive for at least 10 minutes to get to the mall. We ate at Lads Burger at Murt's dad's recommendation. The food was a little pricey (although no where near as pricey as at Atlantis) but quite good. My highlight is the Big Lads burger (which I assume is their signature item based on the name), which featured mango and beets as toppings.

After dinner we returned home for a brief rest, before heading to Global Village. Global Village is basically a glorified shopping mall featuring several areas, each themed after a different region of the world (I would say country, but it is really a bunch of Middle Eastern and Asian countries, then the entirety of Europe, America, and Africa each lumped in to a single zone for each continent). As an analogy, it is like a larger version of the Epcot World Showcase at Disney World, but with all the rides and shows replaced with more shopping. I did not partake in any shopping, but it was fun to eat food from around the world all in one place (unlike Aquaventure or Epcot, the food here was more reasonably priced - though still not cheap). My highlights would definitely be the mango sticky rice and coconut smoothie in the Thai Floating Market section of the park.

We stayed at Global Village until they closed at midnight, then headed home, intending to sleep early (for our standards), as we plan to wake up early in the morning!