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Today we are taking an overnight trip to a place we knew almost nothing about. It was just a name we’ve heard from time to time and it sounded pretty exotic.
Abu Dhabi is an amazing success story. Maybe we’re just ignorant but there seem to be so many places in the world that we Westerners just don’t know much about. So, let’s start by providing an overview of the United Arab Emirates.
Click here for the detailed Abu Dhabi Photo Gallery.
The United Arab Emirates or UAE is a country on the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Oman to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south and sharing sea boarders with Qata and Iran. It is a federation of seven emirates or principalities, each governed by a hereditary emir and with a single national president. The emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al Quwain.
Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE. The current political structure was put in place in 1971. Abu Dhabi is by far the largest of the emirates with 87% of the land mass and the majority of the oil reserves. Abu Dhabi alone takes in over $200 million/day net in oil revenues. For more interesting information on the UAE, including the history of pirates in this area, click here.
The trip started out by exiting the Voyager and boarding the tour bus by passing through the Dubai Cruise Ship Terminal which was a very clean, decent sized but simple structure. The buses were modern, reasonably comfortable and had decent air conditioning. Our tour guide was about 70% understandable and, despite a bit of repetition, managed to give us a great overview of the area over the two days.
Our drive started out with the new Dubai and the interesting Palm Island area. There are three man-made palm island developments going on. The Palm Jumeirah was the first and, by far, the most developed. It consists of 16 palm frond areas and a surrounding crescent island with a road and monorail going down the middle. There are two other palm islands under construction as well as an off-shore group of islands called The World. That project seems to be stalled and there are even rumors that the islands are sinking. No time to include all that information here.
We drove past the Jumeirah Atlantis hotel on the top of the palm and then continued to Jumeirah Zabeel Saray Hotel on the crescent island. This hotel reminded us of the Belagio-type hotels in Las Vegas. This is an expansive hotel property making use of marble and crystal and throughout there are high-end retail stores.
After a great buffet lunch we headed past the Marina district and then onto the freeway heading to Abu Dhabi.
After about 90 minutes we arrived to Abu Dhabi. Our first stop was the Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Grand Mosque. The mosque is named after the late President of the UAE and he is buried on the grounds. This is the largest mosque in the UAE. It can accommodate 40,000 worshipers and the inside hall can hold over 7,000. The courtyard is the largest marble mosaic in the world and the carpet, which covers the entire inside area, is the largest in the world. It was constructed by 1,300 people working for over a two year period and it weighs in at over 35 tons! There are beautiful chandeliers throughout made from millions of Swarovski crystals. Margaret had to put on a saree, including covering her head, in order to enter the sanctuary. Of course, it was hot and she was fully clothed underneath…a veritable sauna. That explains the sad look on her face in the pictures! Everything about the structure was a bit overdone, including the amazing restrooms on the ground floor that you reach with dual escalators. But, that’s the whole idea and it was very grand indeed.
Next, we took a bus tour of Yas Island which is a partially completed entertainment, business, hotel and residential development. Already Yas has the Marina Circuit Formula 1 race track where international events are held. It also has a professional golf course where a PGA event is held each year and Ferrari World, which is the world’s largest indoor them park. This includes the fastest roller coaster in the world that goes 140 mph! Check it out by clicking here.
Although it was dark by this time and all of us were ready to call it a day we still had to visit Manarat Saadiyat. This is a learning center built to educate locals and foreigners alike about he future of Saadiyat Island. Most of us referred to it as a high-end timeshare sales office.
It was a huge building with a variety of rooms that had state-of-the-art multimedia presentations. Of course, they didn’t do a high pressure close on us…our time was very limited…but some of us thought it a bit of a strange tour destination, especially after dark on a full-day of activities. All that being said, the development is a big vision and pretty interesting. We could expect nothing less from the leaders in Abu Dhabi.
The island will be separated into five different areas including a Cultural district, Promenade district, Marina district, Reserve district, Beach district and Retreat district. The Cultural district, for example, will have five world-class museums that are to be completed in less than five years. This includes the Zayed National Museum, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Maritime Museum and the Performing Arts Center. All are intended to draw people from around the world and all will be within walking distance of each other surrounded by restaurants and housing developments. To investigate Saadiyat Island’s development you can click here.
Eventually we were back on the bus and were taken to our hotel. We stayed overnight in one of the first two hotels on the island, the Park Hyatt Saadiyat Beach Hotel. It was very modern and trendy. We had a buffet dinner that was served on a grassy area adjacent to the beach. It was quite dark and you had to watch your step on the highly polished marble in the hotel and the steps going down to the beach. The food was OK and, despite all of us being surprised to find ourselves outside in the heat, the nice breeze kept things under control and it seemed everyone enjoyed themselves. We found our room’s air conditioning wasn’t working but the hotel got it going while we were at dinner.
We had dinner with a nice couple, Peter and Nancy who are from downtown San Francisco. Peter was involved in developing the graphics in the Mac OSX operating system and was also involved with Next Computer and some other graphics companies that I had worked with in the early 90’s. It was cool to meet a pioneer in the computer industry!
After dinner we fell asleep watching Arabic shows on the huge wide-screen TV in our room while figuring out how to turn out all the lights. A full day!
Photography Comments:
I didn’t have high hopes for pictures today. It was amazingly hazy due to sandstorms that had been in the area and the bus windows weren’t exactly spotless. In fact, after seeing the latest Mission Impossible movie which was partly filmed in Dubai, we were lucky that we could see anything at all! But, after looking at the pictures it is, once again, amazing what the black, contrast and detail sliders can do in Lightroom (e.g. Photoshop). I love the buildings in Dubai! The lighting was very challenging in the Grand Mosque, both inside and out but we managed to show you what it looked like and even got some interesting effects as the sun went down. This was a day when you needed seats on both sides of the bus to get all the good shots but I didn’t feel like jumping around. So, some of the shots are less than stellar. You do what you can do and try to enjoy the “real” world as you go.
Cheryl - I love the photo of the silhoutte. Stephen and Mark went to Dubai this last year. I remember looking in the exchange book when working at the resort to see where the most exchanges were… Dubai was at the top of the list!