Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Burj Khalifa up close and personal




After all my ranting about how difficult it was to buy tickets for the Burj it seems that I wasn't the only one scared off. The promised hordes of unwieldy tourists were no where to be found. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that there was almost no merchandise to be purchased since no one has had time to make stuff emblazoned with Burj Khalifa (instead of Burj Dubai). Burj, by the way, means tower.
Yesterday we marched up and were able to buy tickets with just two hours advance notice (of course, that means we'll be going twice as we were supposed to be on a scouting mission to buy tickets for next week for the whole family---which we did--but Sebastian and I couldn't resist taking a quick look ourselves).
A few days ago, one of the elevators (the fastest in the world--10m/second) was stuck at 400m for over an hour. I'm pretty certain I would have gone from that elevator to the morgue as my heart doesn't beat for me at that height when stuck and hanging from a cable with 11 other people. Lucky for me, our elevator had no such problem. The view is quite amazing as is the fact that it's sort of on the edge of civilization...or that's how it looks from up there.

Oh and buy the way...the concrete they used in the building is the weight of 100,000 elephants. (Do you think those are the African or the Asian variety???)

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