On Top of the WORLD!!! In the Flattest Country on Earth

     The Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world, and one heck of a tourist attraction. It is 2,720 ft to the very tip of the structure, so about very tall. While Farm Grandpa and Aunt and Uncle Foerster were here to visit us, we took the opportunity to pay a visit to the monumental structure, and it was AWESOME.

     We started our epic expedition on the other side of the mall from our destination, and it took us FOREVER so walk all the way over to the Burj. When we finally arrived, however, there were gazillions of tourist groups and we were afraid we would miss our ticket. (If you're late for the time that you booked to go up in the Burj Khalifa, then you have to buy new tickets for a different time.) But we made it, and just in time too. After a short wait (like two minutes) in the lounge snacking on Arabic sweets and coffee our guide appeared -

G is not a big fan of Arabic coffee (features Cardamom)

and gave us a quick explanation of where we would be going, and then we left.
     Waiting in line for the elevators, we were informed that they were the fastest elevators in the world, and all I could think about was what would happen if they broke. Would we experience ZeroGs before plummeting down the elevator shaft? Anyway, our first stop was at the 148th floor.

This was the exclusive floor, only accessable with the special more ex[ensive tickets. There were drinks and sweets, and incredible 360°, panoramic views. THERE WAS EVEN AN OUTDOOR OBSERVATION DECK (highest in the WORLD). But, the floorboards were loose and creaky so I didn't spend much time out there... The coolest thing there, in my humble, documented, broadcasted, and published opinion, was the VR simulator. (Sorry, no pictures.) It worked like this: putting your hand above a short podium in the middle of the room causes a cursor to appear, and moving your hand around (IN THIN AIR) will cause the cursor to move around. And get this, the motion-sensing technology involved is so advanced, it detects three dimensions of movement, and translates them onto a two-dimensional screen. So your cursor can be in any of the four quadrants of a normal Cartesian coordinate plane superimposed on the screen, but it can also be BEHIND another cursor or in the front or rear of the image as if the image wasn't 2D picture, but 3D scene. Blew. My. Mind.
     After we finished there, we went to the 124 and 125 floors, which were joined by a staircase. These floors were the floors accessed by any ticket.

Thus it was that there were about a ZILLION people there. There was a nice observation deck (the floorboards were creaky again), and a couple of chairs hanging from the ceiling that Greta tried out, but otherwise everything we saw at the 124/5th floors were the same as the 148th floor, so we didn't stay quite as long. Predictably, we had to exit through the gift shop. The line to the elevators, though, was EXTREMELY EXTENSIVE. We despaired of ever escaping the Burj Khalifa in the next millennia. Then we noticed that, because we had special tickets we could skip the line for peasantry and take the fast que down. We took the elevators down to the ground level and concluded our tour of the tallest building in the world.

Our takes on the tour:

Me: My favorite part of the tour was seeing the tops of surrounding buildings instead of the sides and underneaths. True fact: people don't put as much effort into the tops of buildings as they do the sides and interiors, which makes sense because mostly people don't look at the buildings from above.

Mom: It was cooler than I expected. The views were interesting, especially seeing the fog surrounding the marina area. I am super glad we went for the more expensive tickets, just to bypass all the waiting in line AND GET SNACKS. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience: I'm glad we did it once.

Greta: My favorite part of the whole thing would be the macrons at the 148th floor, or the bubble chairs at the 124th floor that hung from the ceiling and you could swing and spin in them.