Day 5

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Day 5


Today was a busy day! first of all, we skipped breakfast as we had brunch booked at the revolving restaurant. about 40 stories high, it commands great views of the Abu Dhabi skyline, as hopefully some of the pics will show, and the food, which was an all you can eat buffet with free sparkling wine, was absolutely amazing. As a result, we spent around 3 hours there eating too much and generally indulging in the high life..this included being most impressed with a helicopter towing a giant UAE flag, and getting to watch a speedboat race as they did laps around one of the smaller islands, and watching the view slowly changing as the restaurant revolved around. Took about an hour and a half for the restaurant to do an entire revolution, so it wasn't exactly a roller coaster ride, but you could see the movement and feel it ever so slightly while you ate.

After that near death experience(!) it was a case of trying to take it easy and move for the rest of the day, but there was plenty going on, so it was a case of heading back to the flat to grab my camera and tripod and then it was off to the F1 experience for the Brazilian parade. We only just caught this and there were plenty of people around but we managed to get some photos. There were various points where it lined up and paraded past the different parts of the venue, so I was able to catch the show on one more of those displays.

This is the "technical" bit!
I also got to play with a new toy! My dad had very kindly managed to pick me up a bargain neutral density filter. What this does is basically to reduce the amount of light that hits the camera lens dramatically. What I really wanted to try and use this for is when we get to NZ to be able to take some night time shots of the stars and have them trail across the sky. Ideally this will be something like a many hour exposure, the neutral density filter means that far less light hits the camera so you need a longer exposure. I decided to play as, one of the features of this filter is that it will render people pretty much invisible as they move too quickly to be captured. An example of what I mean is that last night a particular shot needed 0.7 seconds exposure, and, after putting the filter on, that changed to a 5 minute exposure. used my remote control to start and stop the exposure too, so that was quite interesting. didn't really get the results i was after, but i'll play with that another time.

After that, we strolled along the beach to check out the live band. didn't stay long, it has to be said, and then after not being allowed into the bar at the Sheraton as i had sandals on(!) we headed for home.

Helen and I headed out for what I thought was a coffee after we got back, back to Ninars once again, but it turns out she was hungry so she had a burger and i had a salad, along with an iced coffee and a cocktail. No alcohol out here unless you have a licence (so you can buy it at a special drinks shop) and you can buy them in specialist bars, but most cafes won't sell alcohol, so the Ninar cocktail is just a mixture of fruit smoothies in different patterns. Looks rather good, its what we photographed Helen with on day 2.

So, another sheesha, which definitely don't agree with me, sadly, and then we headed home ready to plan our day tomorrow, the main mosque in Abu Dhabi and then on from there for a day trip to Dubai! With luck, hopefully being able to get up the Kalifa, the tallest building in the world! 😊

Time for some sleep now though!

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Comments

[Dad]

better luck next time
Look forward to the ND results in due course! Stay bright! D