The Mall, the Aquarium and the Fountain

Downtown Dubai is built around one mall, one lake and one tower, and most visitors turn up for one of the three and end up doing all of them. So plan it as an evening. Arrive in the late afternoon, give the aquarium an hour or two, walk off whatever you ate, and be out by the water once it is dark.

The aquarium is inside the mall. On the ground floor a walk-through tunnel runs for 48 metres under the main tank, with glass curving up and over you. Rays drift across the top like slow kites. The sharks are the part everyone waits for: more than four hundred sharks and rays live in there, sand tiger sharks among them, and they pass close enough that you can see their teeth without trying. Upstairs, the Underwater Zoo moves on to a rainforest, a rocky shore and the open ocean, with presentations through the day. The glass-bottom boat goes across the top of the same tank, which is the best way to understand how big it is.

Then there is the mall itself. It has more than twelve hundred shops and over two hundred places to eat, and nobody needs to see all of them. For children aged two to sixteen there is KidZania, the play city. For everybody else there is a long, cool walk and a sit-down meal facing the lake.

After dark the fountain takes over. It sits on the Burj Lake right beside the mall and is billed as the largest choreographed fountain show in the world. For once the billing is fair. Jets rise in lines and arcs, lit from below, and move in time to anything from classical pieces to current hits, with the Burj Khalifa standing lit above the whole thing. In the evening the shows come round every half hour, so if the first one is over by the time you find a spot, you can wait for the next. Watch from the promenade in front of the mall, from the terraces of Souk Al Bahar across the water, or from the boardwalk that goes out onto the lake, close enough to feel the spray.

The tower is right there too. Book a sunset slot up the Burj Khalifa, come down, and watch the fountain from ground level. That is the neatest evening Downtown has, and the children will talk about the sharks the whole way back to the hotel.

Good to know

• Book the glass-bottom boat as soon as you arrive, at its own entrance upstairs. Leave it till later and the wait can be long.
• Aquarium tickets are single entry. Once you leave, you cannot go back in.
• Flash is not allowed in parts of the aquarium. Turn it off before the tunnel and your photographs will come out better anyway.
• The fountain pauses for maintenance and on official occasions. We check the schedule for your dates.
• Covered shoulders and knees are expected in the mall. Pack for it rather than being caught out at the door.
• The metro connects to the mall by a covered link bridge, which is handy if your hotel is near a station.