Compared · 5 minute read
The monorail costs AED 15 one way and runs up the trunk to Atlantis in about ten minutes, but it is at ground level so you see buildings rather than the Palm. A boat runs the outside of the crescent and shows you the shape, the Atlantis frontage and the sheltered lagoon — from AED 2,250 for a three-hour charter, or AED 220 on a shared RIB tour.
Published
The monorail runs from Gateway Station at the base of the trunk to Atlantis Aquaventure at the crescent, a journey of about ten minutes for AED 15 one way. It is elevated, but only a few storeys, and the trunk is lined with residential towers on both sides.
The result is that you travel the length of the Palm and see almost none of it. The fronds are behind the towers, the water is barely visible, and the shape — the entire reason the Palm is famous — is not perceptible from inside it at all.
What it is genuinely good for is getting to Atlantis without driving, and the last stretch approaching the crescent does open up.
The outside of the crescent, at slow speed, directly in front of Atlantis and the Royal Atlantis — close enough to see people on the balconies. Then round the crescent tip and inside, into the lagoon.
The lagoon is the part that only exists by boat. The crescent acts as a breakwater, so inside it the water is flat almost every day of the year even when the open sea is choppy. It is where charters anchor to swim and it is empty in a way nothing else on this coast is.
You still do not see the palm shape. Nobody does from sea level. What you see instead is the scale — the crescent alone is eleven kilometres of breakwater — which does not come across from a photograph.
If you are going to Atlantis anyway, take the monorail — it is cheap, quick and solves a parking problem. Do not take it expecting a sightseeing experience.
If the Palm itself is what you came for, take a boat. A shared RIB tour at AED 220 covers the crescent and Atlantis in ninety minutes and is the cheapest way to see it properly. A three-hour private charter at AED 2,250 adds the thing neither of the others has: an hour anchored in flat water inside the crescent with the ladder down.
If you want the shape, neither. That needs an aircraft, or The View at the Palm observation deck at the top of the trunk.
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