Dubai Day 2
Monday 9th October
First up it was a visit to The Museum of the Future. It’s housed in yet another spectacular, purpose built structure with exhibits devoted to innovative and futuristic ideologies. The exterior of the building has a stainless steel appearance with windows in the form of a poem about the future, written by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai. The landmark building was opened by the Sheikh on 22 February 2022 – a palindrome.
The experience commences with a journey to outer space and the year 2071.
It then continues to descend through the building. In the next chapter we experienced the ecology and biodiversity of the future, focusing on repairing, restoring and renewing life on Earth. This included a room housing thousands of specimen jars.
The third chapter was the Al Waha, Arabic for oasis. This was all about our senses and how we can connect with our inner self. There was one large room devoted to meditation. A place to lie down and disconnect from the outside world (and our devices). Unfortunately the concept seemed to be wasted on all the visitors we encountered – every single one of them lying down on the mats were playing on their phones!
Moving onto the the second chapter we discovered Tomorrow Today. There were the usual ideas around alternative energy sources, driverless vehicles, drones and robots. They had some great ideas on renewable building products, even though some of those methods have been around for centuries e.g. mud brick. I was impressed by the packaging for food and personal care products being made from seaweed.
Chapter one was dedicated to the Future Hero. In other words a giant indoor fun activity Centre for the kids.
We rode the local metro system and visited the old souk (markets). There are alleyways dedicated to selling spices, utensils, pashminas, gold and more. We didn’t last too long out in 40C and headed back to the air conditioned metro and the Dubai Mall.
