Blogs from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Middle East - page 11

Well, here I sit looking out the window at Abu Dhabi airport. Looks just the same as Sydney or Melbourne... could be anywhere really. Looking out the window of the plane coming down though it was unmistakable that is wasn't just anywhere. Sand, sand and more sand. Oh and did I mention that there was a lot of sand. I decided not to do a stopover here; too anxious to get to Italy! Flight from Hobart was fast... flight from Melbourne to Abu Dhabi was slow! Seriously though, not too bad for a 14-hour flight. I think I slept for about three hours. Pretty good considering how cramped it was. The flight was absolutely full... not a spare seat to be had. I flew Etihad, the national carrier of the UAE. Food was pretty good, everything ... read more

Happy Weekend! Hope you have some fun stuff planned for yourself! I had a great day (weekend here). I attended the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship and had the opportunity to watch both Rory McIlroy AND Tiger Woods in the same threesome. What are the odds of that? How lucky was I? We started off at 7:40 a.m. thinking we were gonna see Tiger, Rory and Luke tee off (so read the schedule online), but we get to the course only to find that they didn't tee-off until noon. Funny thing is Sergio Garcia, Martin Kaymer, and Lee Westwood were set to tee off at 7:50 a.m. so we decided to follow them for the first nine instead. Terri and I followed Sergio last year in Dubai, so that was a weird coincidence. Okay, I'll admit ... read more

We moved to Abu Dhabi yesterday for the start of the second test, which starts on Wednesday. Our final two days in Dubai were disappointing because the weather was not at all good! It reminded us of cold, windy,cloudy days on holiday in Devon when the kids were young! Even included was some Devon fog, we couldn't see the Atlantis Hotel which was a view from our hotel balcony! A couple of English people in the hotel lift were Packed ready for theirflight home and were moaning about not having a tan!!! The coach trip to our hotel right next to the Abu Dhabi Mall took an hour and 20 minutes, an easy run with areas of 'forest' along the side of the motorway, apparently the government are planting forests to make the area look better, ... read more

Hi, I am going to restart this blog with photos of Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, where we visited on the weekend. It is so stunning, majestic and peaceful, I thought it would be a nice introduction back to the UAE. It was a long weekend in the UAE, for Islamic New Year, coinciding with the UAE National Day 40th yr celebrations, so it was a great chance to visit Abu Dhabi for 3 days...more to come on that later. To briefly fill you in, I started this blog several years ago when we were living in Abu Dhabi. After returning to Australia for a year or so, we have now just recently relocated back to the UAE, although this time we are living in Dubai. I will recap in the following blog entries, ... read more

So the Etihad flight was pretty good actually, overnight from London. There was the usual o no when you realise your sat behind two kids! Surely the airlines should have a seperate area for family which gives them more space and it sound proofed!! When we landed at 7am it was 22oC! So onto the nice free Etihad coach to Dubai now!... read more