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Published: December 27th 2009
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This is a "very" belated entry - sorry! - I know some of you have been curious about our little stop-over in Abu Dhabi, so while I have some time I thought I would update you on the last days of our trip.
We were glad to be breaking the trip up, the travelling had made us tired and we weren't looking forward to hours & hours on a plane. Our flight left Brussels and the 7 hours to Abu Dhabi felt like forever. We arrived at 7am in the morning, all really cranky with each other and the temperature change came as a bit of a shock. Despite this finding a taxi to take us from the airport to our hotel which was about an hour away was no hassle, but then the fun began. We arrived at our apartments at around 8.30am and we thought this was a little early for check in but it wasn't, they were quite happy for us to check in............but now for the "big but".....they tried telling us one of our room bookings had been cancelled they quoted a date and the name of some travel agent in the UK - very strange
seeing this date was before our confirmation letter ( that I had in my hot little hands ) and our rooms had been booked and paid for with a travel agent in Australia. Anyway, it is a long story and it took over an hour to sort the mess out, including a phone call to Aus - lucky it was 3.30pm in the afternoon!! We were eventually given room keys, the girls on the 2nd floor, us on the 7th ( we had to forego the innerconnecting rooms ) - the rooms were very classy, clean and cool. By this time our crankiness had almost reached a crisis point and it was decided we should all have a sleep and shower and meet again at around 2pm. When we emerged the staff at our hotel were very apologetic and ever so attentive, but really, I think they are like this all the time. After some discussion with the concierge we decided to hire the services of a personal driver and tour guide to take us to the city sights.Our first point of call was the Grand Mosque. The majestic Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque is probably the most
imposing religious and national landmark in Abu Dhabi. On arrival the girls and I had to change into some conservative Muslim clothing - see photos. The Mosque is amazing,the initial architectural design was Moroccan, but it evolved to include many global features, including exterior walls that are of traditional Turkish design. Natural materials were chosen for its design and construction, which include marble, stone, gold, semi-precious stones, crystals and ceramics. It has 1,096 columns in its exterior and 96 columns in the main prayer hall which are embedded with more than 20,000 handmade marble panels encrusted with semi-precious stones, including lapis,amethyst, and mother of pearl.The Mosque also features seven 24-carat gold-plated chandeliers which were imported from Germany, all designed with thousands of Swarovski crystals. The largest of these chandeliers, which hangs from the main dome of the Mosque, is considered the biggest in the world; it measures 10 metres in diameter, 15 metres in height, and eight-to-nine tonnes in weight. It holds lots of Guiness World records including the largest woven persian carpet - this is in the prayer hall. We spent quite a bit of time here before heading off for a driveby tour of the city buildings including
the Emirates Palace and Yas Island ( Formula One site ), then off to the Heritage Village before ending up at the Marina Mall for some dinner. On our way back to our hotel the streets were decorated in some amazing light displays but not Christmas decorations ( although there were plenty of Chrissy decos ) these lights were part of the 38th birthday celebrations of the UAE.
The next day we had a little sleep-in before heading off to the Abu Dhabi Mall and some shopping - the shopping here is tax free and Larissa took full advantage of this to restock her wardrobe LOL! a Little Black Dress, t-shirts, jewellery etc etc....Stacey and I didn't do too bad either!! 😉 We would have spent more time here but the wallets were getting empty and we had to be back at our hotel at 3pm for our pickup. We we heading off on a desert safari. Our driver picked us up and we were joined by a lovely couple from Germany we then drove about 1 1/2 hours out of the city to the desert. We stopped of at a Camel Farm while our driver prepared our car for
some dune bashing. Oh my!! was this scary and Larissa screeched and squealed louder than the rest of us. The sand dunes were so high and at times I really thought we would tip over at other times we couldn't see out the windows because of the amount of sand being thrown around. We stopped to take in a Desert Sunset before heading off to a traditional Bedouin Camp for a BBQ - while there, we had camel rides, dressed up in traditional clothing, had henna tatoos and a puff on the Shisha ( Hookah ) pipes - it was such a fun trip and possibly one of the highlights of our time away. On our last day in Abu Dhabi we headed again into the Marina Mall so yes you guessed it more shopping! We had lunch at a lovely "french" restaurant before heading back to our hotel for our bags and the trip back out to the airport. We enjoyed Abu Dhabi much more than we thought - we all voted it would be worth going back to at some stage to explore a bit more.
Hope you enjoy the pics and the last installment of these travels..............but
stay tuned Rob & I are already planning our next trip!!! LOL!
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