The busy days on our Big Adventure certainly didn’t slow down on our third day in Dubai with ‘Museums and Miracles’ on the agenda.

Consider this a ‘His and Her’s Day’ with something for Wendy and another for Laurence. Believe it or not, there were no arguments over which was enjoyed first, but more about that in the ‘Behind the Scenes’ section below.

Before going any further in this article, make sure to answer our question for this video; Have you ever split up a travel day to keep everyone happy? We would love to know the who, what, where and how it turned out! Let us know in the comments section.

Knew what to expect – Wasn’t what we expected

This is probably the only day in Dubai we knew what to expect. Or so we thought.

One fact was certain, the Dubai Miracle Garden would take us on our longest taxi ride since arriving in Dubai. It may not look very far on the map, but we drove past everything visited to date, going a whopping 20 miles, or 33 kilometers from our hotel. That may not seem like much but feels like forever when you have no idea where you’re going.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Museum of the Future

Adding the Museum of the Future to the itinerary was a difficult decision when planning our adventure in Dubai. It was a new attraction, there was limited information about the museum and its attractions, and outside the same clips of the museum’s lobby and its flying drone, certainly nothing on YouTube.

What we did know, it opened in February 2022, only nine months before we arrived in Dubai. The goal of this museum is to promote technological development and innovation, especially in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.

We also knew Laurence likes museums.

At the time, tickets sold out quickly, which is one of the reasons we bought ours well before setting off on the Big Adventure. The museum certainly enjoys the most unique-looking building in Dubai and possibly in the world. It bends the mind to understand how they fit such a large museum in what appears to be a small building. After all, it has no center!

But they do and it’s considered one of the world’s most complex structures. Designed by Killa Design and engineered by Buro Happold, the exterior façade of the building comprises of windows that form an Arabic poem by Dubai’s ruler about the emirate’s future. The words written on the Dubai Museum of the Future are 3 quotes from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates:

• We won’t live for hundreds of years, but we can create something that will last for hundreds of years.
• The future will be for those who will be able to imagine, design and build it, the future does not wait, the future can be designed and built today.
• The secret of the renewal of life, the development of civilization and the progress of humanity is in one word: innovation.

The museum has seven floors and visitors are initially directed through an immersive ride to an orbiting space station and walked through what it would take for humans to conquer living in space and colonizing New Worlds. This is done as well as anything you would find Disney or Universal theme parks!

Once ‘back on Earth’ visitors are free to explore the rest of the museum in any order and at their own pace. If you decide to go to the museum, make sure to take everything in regardless of how an area may initially appear. A great example of giving each area an opportunity to shine, a mediation center that asks visitors to lay with a roomful of others and at first it looked, well, lame. But it was amazing.

We were so relaxed, there’s not one picture or any footage!

Just give everything a chance, you can thank us later.

Giving you a Hand

As nearly as popular as the museum itself, the Hand statue attracts a lot of tourists, some of which aren’t even going inside the Museum of the Future.

The statue models a popular hand sign in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The 3-finger salute was created by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai in 2013. It shows the W for Win, the V for Victory and the L for Love.

The sign has become a trademark gesture for many UAE citizens and residents and symbolize work ethic, success and love of the nation. We were told it was modelled after HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s very own hand, but we couldn’t find anything to verify this.

It’s incredible to see and so large, difficult to fit in any selfie. We were lucky enough to have a seasoned tour guide take our picture and she managed to get everything in the frame!

Travel Tips for the museum

• Get there early! – There is a lot to see before even entering the building, both the museum and the famous hand statue. Depending how many pictures you’ll take, wandering around the museum can take thirty minutes. Then there’s time lost standing in a possible line to have your picture taken in front of the Hand
• They allow professional cameras – Not only does the museum allow professional cameras, they encourage them! The different areas and displays are low light, so be prepared to take pictures in near darkness. The only brightly lit areas are the lobby and innovation museum.
• Take your time – We found we took better pictures and enjoyed the museum more if we let the crowds speed-walk past us. The only place this isn’t possible is the Space Station, where groups are moved from floor to floor together.

Dubai Miracle Garden

As mentioned the opening paragraph, the Dubai Miracle Garden is on the outskirts of what’s considered the heart of Dubai.

The Dubai Miracle Garden is a flower garden that’s considered the world’s largest natural flower garden, occupying over 780,000 sq ft (72,000 square meters) and features over 50 million flowers and 250 million plants. Or as Wendy puts it, ‘The Disney of flowers!’

It was officially opened on Valentine’s Day in 2013.

The Dubai Miracle Garden generally operates from October to April every year. Be warned, it’s closed from May to September due to high temperatures averaging of 40 °C, that’s 104 °F!

If you’re wondering about the ‘Miracle’ in Miracle Garden, how do they grow such lush plants in the desert, this is what we were told. The garden is grown re-using treated wastewater through a drip irrigation method with an average amount of 757,082 liters (200,000 US gallons) of water per day.

According to the officials of Dubai Miracle Garden, the Dubai municipality retreats the grey water of the city and sends it directly to the garden. The garden again re-filters the water and converts it to high-quality water for its usage in the garden.

The garden is only watered after it closes at night.

There are a lot of amazing displays, the Dubai Miracle Garden is known for it’s Airbus A380 flower structure, which is listed by Guinness World Records as the biggest flower structure in the world. The park enters into licensing agreements to feature famous characters and while we don’t know how often these are renewed, it appears the Grdens change their displays from time to time. If you’re going for a particular feature, check the Dubai Miracle Garden’s website for the latest information.

Tips for Dubai Miracle Garden

• The ‘bottleneck’ areas for photographs are the Floral Clock, Tunnel of Love (seen below), and of course the entrance where the two large horse heads welcome guests to the park.
• No professional cameras are allowed. As best as we could determine, this is any camera with a detachable lens. Smartphones and action cameras, such as a GoPro, are fine and is pretty much all we saw being used.
• No outside food or drinks are allowed.
• If paying for food or other items with cash, make sure you have smaller bills/notes. We had an incident where the food stand couldn’t give us the correct change. Dubai is very strict around paying bills and honesty, allowing the vendor to ‘keep the change’ won’t work and puts them in a bad situation.
• There will be a lot of children, tourists, and very loud music throughout the park. While it can be annoying at times, it’s part of the experience.

Behind the scenes (possible spoilers)

If this is your first time reading a ‘closer look’ at one of our YouTube videos, watch the video before reading any further. There may be possible spoilers!

As mentioned in other posts, this trip was the first travel adventure we knew would make it onto YouTube. While there aren’t as many moments of speaking to the camera as a modern travel Vlog, even one would’ve been more than seen in any prior trips. And yes, we do plan on publishing past travel adventures, low resolutions and all!

No master plan

While Wendy usually takes great care planning out our travel days, a series of obvious choices helped this day plan itself.

Knowing we would want to have our picture in front of the Hand statue and take as many photos and footage of the museum as we could, making it the first stop of the day was decided for us. Add to this, Wendy wanted to see the Dubai Miracle Garden during the day as well as at night led to the even more obvious choice of making that the last stop of the day.

What was nice, Wendy didn’t try to rush us through the museum with a set time for the Dubai Miracle Garden. We took our time at both, and both enjoyed each thoroughly!

Video nearly didn’t make it

Computer issues made it impossible to render (converting edited footage to a format to upload onto YouTube) and we couldn’t create a copy of the completed video. Fortunately, we produce preview copies throughout the process to review and used the most recent one available. Unfortunately, this has a few small errors and is missing a few titles, such as the location title for the Muesum of the Future.

Forget more cowbell, we need more floating drone footage!

Wendy was quite amused at Laurence’s fascination with the drone floating around the museum’s lobby.

He took so much footage both when we arrived and on the way out, we could never use it all in one of our videos.

All smiles, all the time

Wendy wasn’t smiling just for the camera while we visited the Dubai Miracle Garden, that smile stayed on her face pretty much the whole time! It was everything she’d hoped for and more.

If we hadn’t been on our feet since 9 in the morning, we probably would’ve stayed until the park closed!