TRAVEL bqlive.co.uk
highest pool, highest private apartment and - who knows? - on the observation deck 148 storeys up, maybe the highest Guinness Book of Records plaque. The sheer preposterousness of the place is perhaps bested only by the fountains towards the side of the hotel. From a restaurant veranda guests can watch the halfhourly display of what can only be described as liquid fireworks, a show of sequenced sweeping, swooning and rocketing water jets to the theme of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ or a touch of Strauss. You can’t but wonder what it’s all for, this spectacle made of the desert’s most precious resource. But you can’t help being captivated like a child nonetheless. It is, indeed, all very Las Vegas, another infrastructural wonder in the middle of a desert. Nevada has the strippers and the booze, of course, if they’re your poisons. But then it doesn’t have this not so little oasis of Giorgio. That alone might swing the balance. n Rooms at Armani Hotel Dubai start from AED 2,000 per room per night, subject to 10% municipality fee, 10% service charge and a AED20 per room per night tourism fee. www.dubai.armanihotels.com
69
“These passions do drive home what a miracle of transformation Dubai represents - in just some 45 years it has turned desert into destination”