On day 3 our company visit was with Dubai Ports (DP) World. Who knew how much went into operating these ports? We got a glimpse of some of their exception handling rooms where they try to anticipate any unanticipated events. We weren't allowed to take pictures in this room but it looked intense with about 4 rows of people, with each person managing 4 monitors.

Here's a shot from our bus tour of the facilities and some of the containers:


It was amazing to think how they could locate any one package down to the container. Definitely a lot more analytics involved than I expected.

This picture shows where and how well we were hosted by DP World:


After the company visit and a stop at the hotel, we headed back out to the downtown area. A few of our classmates had stayed out there the day before and it sounded like they had a really good time. Instead of a cab, we chose to ride the metro. Each ticket had a small chip in it  for the gates - cool use of technology but unless I'm missing something also quite wasteful.



It took us a while to realize this but towards the back were sections for women and children only. I actually just realized that there is a picture outside to communicate this in the picture below:



If you look closely, you can see me taking the picture in the reflection. As we got closer to the Dubai Mall, the metro got pretty packed:



After we finally arrived we got a close up view of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa:



Not the best picture given the clouds. We made our way down to the mall where there was a fountain show reminiscent of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The show played every half hour or so to different kinds of music.



After the show we went to go eat at a great Japanese restaurant. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of it.



After dinner we grabbed a drink at the 63rd floor bar NEOS at The Address hotel. Cool view of the Burj Khalifa at night as well as of the fountains. There are 2 hotels named 'The Address' in this area - this one was the downtown one not to be confused with the Dubai Mall location.