dubai 24 hours

For the second consecutive year, Dubai had malls open for 24 hours during the Eid holidays. And because we had two reliable people to leave our children with at home, we took advantage of the opportunity to go malling late at night on the second day of Eid Al Adha at the largest mall in the world: Dubai Mall.

As we were approaching the mall, we could see that there was a long queue of cars trying to get in. Fortunately, Hubby had already expected this and came up with a simple but great idea: he parked Pepper just outside Al Murooj Rotana and we walked across to the mall. No queues, no waiting.

Upon entering the mall, there were so many people inside…just like how it is on an ordinary weekend. Ok, it might not have been that late (we got there around 10:30pm), but I honestly thought there wouldn’t be that much people there. Obviously, I thought wrong. So anyway, we headed to Reel Cinemas (it’s one of the best ways to pass away the time, after all), purchased tickets, bought nachos and a big drink to share, and headed to the cinema showing "About Time" starring Rachel McAdams.

The movie wasn’t that exciting; it was just a normal romantic-comedy with the twist that the leading man could go back into time. Still, I enjoyed it. Hubby, on the other hand, dozed off about 45 minutes after the film started. Either he found the story too slow-paced, he was too tired, it was his normal sleeping time, or all of these reasons =) He did manage to stay awake during the last 30 minutes of the movie, though.

After the film, we just walked around the mall and bought a few things for the girls. We were toying with the idea of having a bite to eat, but then decided not to since we weren’t really hungry. So we continued window-shopping. By 2:45am, we were getting pretty bored. There actually wasn’t that much to do; the mall was pretty much the same as it would be on a normal Friday or Saturday. Plus, we were getting sleepy. So, instead of staying until 5am, we walked to our car and headed home 2 hours earlier than planned.

It was a good thing we did because as soon as we arrived at the apartment, we found that Caila had woken up a few minutes earlier and started crying when she noticed she was alone in bed; and no matter what Jovy did to pacify her, she wouldn’t stop. She very rarely wakes up in the middle of the night, so you can imagine how shocked (and maybe horrified) she was when she found we weren’t beside her. Upon entering the room, I changed my clothes as fast as I could and lay down beside her, apologizing and assuring her that she wasn’t alone anymore. Almost right away, she was sleeping soundly as if nothing happened. Whew!

If the malls open for 24 hours again for any special holiday, I don’t think we’ll try it again. Well, maybe we won’t go in the middle of the night. We’ll probably try malling in the early morning when our whole family can go and most of the people are going home or in their beds…err, at least, I hope so.  Maybe.