Mall of the Emirates and Ski Dubai

Mall of the Emirates is the mall that skis. Majid Al Futtaim's flagship on Sheikh Zayed Road would be a destination anyway — more than 600 stores, a luxury Fashion Dome, some 100 restaurants and cafés — but what makes it famous is Ski Dubai: an indoor mountain of real snow, kept at −4°C year-round behind a glass wall in the desert.

Ski Dubai

The Middle East's first indoor ski resort offers runs served by a chairlift, a toboggan and snow-play park, and a colony of resident penguins with daily encounters. Full kit — jackets, trousers, boots, skis — is included with slope passes, so you can walk in from 40°C heat carrying nothing and be on snow twenty minutes later. Watching skiers descend while you drink coffee in shirtsleeves on the mall side of the glass is one of Dubai's defining surreal sights.

The rest of the mall

Shopping runs from department stores to the high-luxury brands of the Fashion Dome, with a large VOX cinema complex and a theatre for live shows. Two five-star hotels — a Kempinski and a Sheraton — connect directly to the mall if you want ski-in, shop-out accommodation.

Getting there

Mall of the Emirates has its own Metro station on the red line, and by car it sits right on Sheikh Zayed Road roughly midway between Downtown and the Marina — easy to fold into a driving day, with thousands of free parking spaces.