If like me, your heart sinks to new depths every time the weather app states “feels like 49 degrees”, we’ve got news that’ll cheer you up. A Dubai restaurant is filling up its outdoor pool with 500kg ice blocks every Saturday. I’ll just leave that there so you can wrap your head around it.
We’ve long been fans of the artistic beachfront restaurant Gallery 7/40 at The Club Palm West Beach for its beautiful interiors and innovative beverages, but it’s making a splash for new reasons now – ‘Cool Splash Saturdays’.
The weekly Saturday pool day concept transforms the swimming pool at this swish restaurant into an ice bath. Giant blocks of ice weighing a total of 500kg are hurled into the pool at two intervals, once at 3pm and a second lot at 4:30pm.
This is as close as you’ll come to floating lazily on ice chunks like a polar bear and don’t mind if we do. Will the ice blocks have a snowball’s chance in, well, Dubai’s infernal heat? For those first hour at least, I hope. It’s a win-win situation either way as once the ice melts into the water it’ll have fixed the temperature of the outdoor pool to just the right side of chilly.
Yes, temperature-controlled pools exist everywhere. But can they ever match the power of an epic tale of chilling around in a pool with 500kg of ice blocks? Now that’s what you call an icebreaker.
Cool Splash Saturdays cost AED300 per person; call 058 550 0740 for bookings.