Top of the World

As Chess.com's news reporter, and in the years I was running ChessVibes.com, I have travelled quite a lot and I have seen many interesting places. The farthest to the west was Mexico City, my first big trip, and my first World Championship, in 2007. The farthest to the East was Shanghai, for the Masters Final in 2010.

The farthest to the North was Tromsø, for the World Cup in 2013 and now I have also made it to the highest place - of the world, in fact. Last week, while spending a week in Dubai for the World Rapid & Blitz Championships, one morning I went up the Burj Khalifa. It is the tallest man-made structure in the world, at 829.8 m (2,722 ft). That's two and a half times the Eiffel Tower!

Obviously I took lots of photos and videos of the view looking over Dubai, but I actually don't have a single picture of the building from the outside so therefore I have to include Wikipedia's photo: 

When I told Danny Rensch about going up this building, he immediately referred to “that scene with Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 4”. I had never seen that movie (I did see the first, and somehow I can't be bothered with sequels unless people are really enthusiastic about them) but last night I decided to watch it. It wasn't too bad, and nice to revisit Dubai one more time! Here's a video Danny shared with me:

It's quite windy up there

In buildings like these it's never possible to really go all the way to the top, but the 124th floor (at 584.5 m), out of 163, wasn't bad either! And the lifts are reallty impressive too - you reach that 124th floor in less than a minute which is about 10 m/s!

The view is stunning and in fact a bit surreal. Because Dubai is basically located in the middle of a desert, the landscape looks more like a maqutte, a model of a city. See for yourself: 

I only had one free morning in Dubai, but I'm very glad I made this trip. The mall and the Burj Khalifa made it quite unforgettable!