Dubai

Pick your base by what you're here for. Downtown puts the Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall and fountains at your doorstep — the best pick for a short, sight-heavy trip, at the highest prices. Dubai Marina and JBR give you beach, waterfront restaurants and nightlife in one walkable strip.

Bur Dubai and Deira are the budget base: old-city souks, cheap and excellent South Asian food, and metro stations everywhere. Business Bay is the mid-range compromise, one stop from Downtown.

If you're unsure, choose any hotel within a 10-minute walk of a Red Line metro station. The Red Line connects the airport, Downtown, Mall of the Emirates and the Marina — that one rule keeps taxi spend down all week.

Dubai is one of the easiest big cities to visit with children — the only real planning trap is height limits. At Aquaventure, most headline slides need riders around 120 cm, but dedicated splash zones keep smaller kids busy, so mixed-age groups still work. The Dubai Aquarium's walk-through tunnel suits toddlers too small for everything else. Split the theme parks by age: Motiongate's cartoon lands fit under-10s, while IMG Worlds leans older, with indoor thrill rides. Desert safaris welcome families, but many operators won't take small children on dune bashing — book a camp-only package with a direct transfer instead; the shows and camel rides are what kids remember anyway.

Base the family at JBR or the Marina for beach mornings (see Where to stay). From June to September, treat Dubai as an indoor city — malls, aquariums, indoor parks. And pace it: one big park per day, never two.

November to March is the season — 25-30°C, outdoor everything open, Global Village running. December and January are peak: the Dubai Shopping Festival stacks sales and fireworks on top, and flights and hotels price accordingly.

April to October is hot to brutal, with June-September crossing 45°C. The city does not stop — malls, aquariums and indoor parks are all air-conditioned, and hotel rates drop sharply, often 30-40% — but skip outdoor plans between 11 am and 5 pm. Desert safaris still run at dawn and dusk.

The Red Line metro runs the length of tourist Dubai — airport, Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall, Mall of the Emirates, Marina. Buy a Nol card and fares run AED 3-7.5 ($0.80-$2) per trip. Note the reserved Gold and women-and-children carriages; fines apply for boarding the wrong one.

Taxis and Careem are metered and honest but add up fast on cross-city runs — the metro plus short taxi hops is the winning formula. The weekend is Saturday-Sunday; Friday midday prayers still slow things briefly, and weekend evenings are the crowd peak everywhere.

Dubai can be cheap or eye-watering — the gap is where you eat and which tickets you buy. Street shawarma runs AED 10-15 (~$3-4), a mall food-court meal AED 30-45 (~$8-12), and a mid-range dinner AED 80-150 (~$22-41) per person.

Big tickets are the real spend: Burj Khalifa from AED 169 (~$46), Aquaventure around AED 329 (~$90), Museum of the Future around AED 150 (~$41), and the Dubai Frame about AED 50 (~$14). A desert safari at AED 100-180 (~$27-49) is the best value of the lot.

Transport stays small: metro trips are AED 3-7.5 (~$1-2) and short taxi hops AED 15-25 (~$4-7). As a planning number, AED 250-400 (~$70-110) per person per day covers food, transport and one big ticket — hotels are on top.

The biggest mistake is treating Dubai as walkable. It is a 50 km strip of separate zones — Downtown to the Marina takes 25-30 minutes even by metro. Group each day by area and you halve your transport time.

Other traps: buying Burj Khalifa tickets at the gate (dated online slots cost less), planning outdoor sights for midday in summer, and jaywalking — crossings are enforced with real fines. Alcohol is served only in licensed venues, mostly inside hotels; drinking in public is illegal.

Finally, don't skip Old Dubai because it isn't shiny. The abra, the souks and Al Fahidi cost almost nothing and balance a trip that can otherwise turn into a mall crawl.

Dubai plus Abu Dhabi is the standard UAE plan: 3-4 days in Dubai, 1-2 for Abu Dhabi's Grand Mosque and Yas Island parks. The cities are 90 minutes apart by road, so it works as a day trip or a two-centre trip.

Dubai is also the layover king — it is one of the world's biggest transit hubs between Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, so a 2-3 day stopover on the way to anywhere is easy to engineer. See the UAE guide for visa notes and route ideas.