The more laid back city: Abu Dhabi — The road liss traveled

A 2.5 hour, not very exciting bus ride gets you to Abu Dhabi. Not shockingly there’s a lot of flat, boring desert scenery in between. Getting into Abu Dhabi you can feel quite a different vibe. It’s the capital city and known being the cultural capital and quite a bit less exciting. There’s wide boulevards with less traffic, as opposed to Dubai’s sprawling highway systems that are impossible to cross for pedestrians. There’s also no metro, so you have to take buses everywhere, which is a bit annoying. There’s way less skyscrapers except for the waterfront. Much more worn out pastel colors as opposed to metallic building materials. Everything felt a touch older. The bus station we arrived into looks like it’s from the 70’s and painted in an avocado green, although it is nice and modern on the inside. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of money that get’s spent by the sheikh in Abu Dhabi!

My particular neighborhood seemed to be the Filipino part of town, complete with a Jollibees. Filipino expat food is much more expensive than Indian expat food! And not as good. Sorry Filipinos- but you just can’t use hot dogs as a normal ingredient in your dishes! I walked around my part of town, and it was not particularly exciting, not even any nice coffee shops, but you could get 33 cent (tiny) paper cups of chai from Indian snack places! I didn’t wait around to head out, the first destination would Abu Dhabi’s self dubbed version of the Louvre! From all looks, it appeared be gorgeous. They’re also making their own version of the Guggenheim, but maybe come up with your own name??

It’s really cool how it sits out on the water

I must admit though, for the actual displays, while they had some very nice stuff, it seemed like mostly a super random hodgepodge of stuff from antiquity, with not a lot of signage explaining things. And there didn’t seem to be a coherent direction to follow. Without enough things to read it too me only 1.5 hours to get through the whole thing. I won’t bore you with any photos of the museum artwork.

The view when you leave the main part of the museum

But, like I said, the place is a stunning piece of architecture, I was much more interested in taking photographs of their public spaces, because they are indeed splendid. An their waterfront viewing area is certainly a place worthy of an $8 cappuccino. I spent a good long time walking around this non-museum section of the museum, which is indeed massive. For example Chicago’s Art Museum has way better works of art, but it can feel old, cramped and stuffy inside compared to this…

It’s also a popular spot for instagrammers, which I didn’t get any myself, but I did creep on a few people getting them taken Everyone waits in line for one specific spot, which you’ll see, as it’s like a catwalk/runway

Ahhh neat architecture spaces are fun. After that it was on the bus and time to catch the sunset somewhere. I didn’t have anywhere in mind so I headed to the waterfront promenade, which runs for many kilometers.Very nicely done. Although no clouds to light up the sky, and not particularly great views of the skyline from this angle, but it was a nice relaxing stroll with lots of people out fishing or exercising. A shocking amount of people fishing, which is actually kind of annoying as you have to avoid their lines. But as usual in the gulf states, it’s still pleasant, well built, well maintained place

it does have a pretty empty feeling to it, there should be more people around, it’s a lovely night

kids playing cricket in front of the very well lit mosque

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Then it was some more wandering and then off to a shisha cafe to to do some reading. I have been reading a lot of the gulf history, being British protectorates, all the oil and gas discovery, the uniting of the emirates, how each country gets along. One thing that really blows my mind about the history of these countries is just how little there was here 50 years ago or whatever. Abu Dhabi developed first, before Dubai, as it discovered oil first and also had the resources in place to develop it, and Dubai developed before Doha. Qatar is like the late comer (as they eventually found a bunch of natural gas reserves) that nobody really likes for it’s ties with Iran and Al Jazeera broadcasting among others, but just look at this photo from then and now, absolutely crazy stuff.

Although what I should have been reading more about was the touristy things to do in Abu Dhabi. There’s a mosque called the Sheikh Zayed mosque, which is supposed to be possibly the prettiest contempory mosques in the world (2007) and I managed to get it confused with the National Palace. The mosque is way outside of the city, while the National Palace is much more centrally located spot - and it also looks amazing, and has 20,000+ reviews on Google, and so I thought that’s what I was looking for because I’m an idiot.

So early in the morning, that’s where I took the bus to. And it was a beautiful piece of architecture. I mean just look at the photos. It’s where they host all the foreign dignitaries. But I thought something seemed odd, and yet net, it never hit me I was in the wrong place! What a brain fart. But still, hard to complain too much here, and I was one of the first ones there. It’s another place that feels like it should have more people!

Then I had some to time to kill during the day, and I packed by swim trunks and towel, so I thought I’d mosey on to the beach. Not a very walkable part of of the city, they had that building pictured below in a place that gets zero pedestrians. Anyway there was a private beach at the Hilton Hotel (friggen everywhere around here is a private beach) but I just moseyed on in an bought an over priced smoothie and the workers seemed cool with that.

random nice buildings that I don’t think anyone ever goes to

small section of beach for the high end hotels

Even this crappy looking beach was a private beach

So last up was the far end of the corniche which is supposed have good views of the skyline and the National Palace and whatever this huge exclusive building is supposed to be

One more of the Royal Palace lit up at night

Then of course a bit more wandering around, which you kind of have to do with no metro and a bus system that stops early. Here were some photos I thought were interesting

The next morning was my flight to Muscat, Oman, (apparently the buses were all booked up days in advance) and wouldn’t you know it, what I saw looking out my window was that big beautiful enormous all-white perfect looking mosque not far off in the distance. Arghhh! Just to rub it in. So that was probably my biggest travel screw-up since somehow not seeing the Sphinx in Egypt.

Here’s the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in case you’re wondering. Sigh