We had a “working” morning today, where Nick and I plan and Millie attempts to play independently. This is not a strength of hers but she tried. Nick used the time researching some upcoming stops, and I spent a painful couple of hours getting our budget spreadsheet up to date and then analyzing various pivot tables.

The summary: we’re over budget. Not catastrophically, but more than I would like to be. We had assumed Turkey would bring us to an equilibrium after Amsterdam but it didn’t, and Dubai definitely won’t. I spiraled a bit about how much we are spending. I feel a lot more comfortable earning and saving money than I do spending it—it’s how we’re able to be on the trip in the first place—so suddenly shifting to a “money out” state is not comfortable for me. Nick helped me feel better by reminding me of two things: 1) We will not look back and remember going slightly over budget (we’re maybe 10% over forecast) and 2) We don’t regret anything we’ve done so far. Other than maybe cutting back on a beer here and there, there aren’t really things we can look back on and wish we had done differently. We want to see these sights, and they are costing us a fixed amount of money. I will probably write a more detailed budget post in a couple of weeks.

At about Noon we left the building and ventured out into the intense heat. The air was foggy. I’m not sure if it’s from heat, sand, or smog. We walked about 10 minutes to the Dubai Mall entrance of the Burj Khalifa and were all sweaty and miserable by the time we got there.

Our first activity was to go to the top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. We thought Millie would love this after being so into the Eiffel Tower, but the energy was more like this:

After a few weeks of dropping it, the thumb-sucking has returned. The elevator was shockingly fast and my ears popped multiple times as we zoomed up. The whole thing had loud narration and a video, probably to distract us from what could have been jarring.

From the top I was reminded that we are in the middle of a desert. It was shocking to see the amount of construction happening around us. Cranes everywhere.

They had photographers at every corner. Once again they gave Millie different poses to rotate through. She ate it up.

She broke her previously held “highest non-airplane bathroom usage” record of the Eiffel Tower.

I considered getting us all matching Burj Khalifa fedoras in the gift shop. Maybe if we weren’t over budget I could have. Would have felt pretty snazzy walking around the mall in these.

Millie got her ICF (Ice Cream Friday) ice cream after we came down. She opted for a strawberry sorbet today. I snapped this photo of her in a pink dress, pink crocs, pink socks, pink cone, under a pink light.

The next stop was the Aquarium, which was also inside of the mall. This is all sort of hell to me, but feels very Dubai. I tried to remain positive instead of thinking about how sad it was that these animals live at a mall.

The big tanks had tourists scubadiving in them, alongside photographers. I’m all about documentation, but it feels like everything in this whole city is an experience built around the post you make about it, rather than the other way around.

After the aquarium we were all hungry so we walked to one of the huge food courts. Millie was already in a whiny mood and wanted to play in an expensive playspace. We agreed to it but only after we had all eaten. This led to a big huge meltdown in the middle of the food court. We’ve had such a good run no meltdowns until today.

At once point she was rolling around on the dirty floor and then attempting to suck her thumb. I picked her up to take her to put hand sanitizer on, which apparently tasted awful. She really wanted to suck her thumb and was screaming “What can I suck?!?!?!!!!!” at the top of her lungs as I carried her through the mall. It was a very fun and cool moment.

Once she recovered we decided to call it a day and head home. We got lost for 30 whole minutes inside the mall, that’s how big it is. We took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in “fashion alley” which is where the realllly fancy designer stores are. Millie saw these kids and exclaimed “Look! Those kids are dressed like mans!”

Eventually we found our exit and decided to get some food at the very fancy Waitrose supermarket instead of buying dinner. This pork cave felt like a bit of a trap.

We got back to our apartment and played, did laundry, and ate dinner. I never want to step foot in a mall again, even if it does have crocodiles and ice rinks and 15 Starbucks.