Dubai Water Canal cruise

The only boat trip that gets under the Burj Khalifa

Downtown Dubai is about five kilometres inland, which is why the Burj Khalifa reads as a distant spike from a boat off the Marina and disappears altogether in summer haze. The Water Canal is the exception: it runs through Business Bay directly beneath Downtown, so from here the tower is overhead rather than on the horizon, and lit after dark.

If that building is the reason you want a boat trip, this is the trip. No charter from Dubai Marina reaches it, at any length or price.

The other set piece is the Sheikh Zayed Road bridge, where a curtain of water falls from the underside into the canal. It runs on a cycle and pauses to let boats through, so you pass beneath it rather than through it.

What the canal is

A three-and-a-half kilometre artificial waterway cut through Business Bay and Safa Park, opened in November 2016, joining Dubai Creek to the Gulf at Jumeirah. Before it, the Creek ran inland and dead-ended; cutting the last stretch through made the whole lower Creek a continuous waterway for the first time.

It is around six metres deep and eighty wide, and it passes under three road bridges. Three kilometres of new canal created six kilometres of new waterfront in districts that previously had none, which is why Business Bay's western edge now faces water instead of a car park.

The most sheltered water in Dubai

This is the calmest boat trip available on this coast and it is worth knowing if anyone in your group is nervous about motion. A canal six metres deep and eighty wide has no swell at any point, the boats are slow, and the sensation is closer to a floating restaurant than a boat trip.

For elderly guests, small children, or anyone who has been put off by a rough crossing somewhere else, that makes this the safe choice. Nobody needs a seasickness tablet for a canal cruise.

Boarding is at Marasi Business Bay, which has proper parking and cafés, and the Business Bay metro station is about ten minutes on foot.