2021-10-02 United Arab Emirates: Oct 13

Today is all about sightseeing in Abu Dhabi.

First stop was a produce market…didn’t look too interesting so just took a couple of quick photos...

and moved moved on to the date market. We did hit one shop where they gave us samples of dates and Mary bought some date jam for gifts.

The skyline of Abu Dhabi isn’t as massive or varied as Dubai but it is nonetheless pretty interesting.

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More Abu Dhabi Skyline
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Abu Dhabi has a very long corniche or waterfront walkway the we followed quite a ways into town.

It passed a harbor area with lots of fishing boats.

We also saw the Fairmont Hotel (from many angles throughout the day).

We drove by the gate to Qasr Al Watan (the presidential palace)

and the Pineapple Building (has nothing to do with pineapples…it just looks a bit like a pineapple).

We also drove by the Founders Memorial. It was an open box with objects hanging from the ceiling on lines of varying lengths. If you lined up with it just right the objects formed an image of the head of Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founder of the UAE. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a photo at a really good angle but you can sort of see the image in this photo.

We also took some time to tour the Qasr Al Hosn, an old fort. It was pretty interesting to tour the area.

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More Qasr Al Hosn
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Downside was the massive plaza outside the fort with its pretty reflecting pool). It had several smallish steps stretching around the plaza (more for aesthetics as the plaza was pretty flat)...

and Mary, looking at some interesting buildings on the far side of the plaza, missed a step and went down hard on both of her already bum knees. Nothing seems to have broken but she was most uncomfortable the rest of the day. Once back at the hotel she had to ice the knees.

The fort was to be toured the next day but since a few other thing weren’t open we squeezed in the fort today. Unfortunately, that reduced the time available for lunch. And lunch was at the truly awesome Emirates Palace hotel. Another Emirates wonderland of gold décor.

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More Emirates Palace
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The food was very good and the ambience lovely but we didn’t have time to linger as we then hurried to a nearby harbor for a cruise of the waterfront. The cruise gave us great views of the skyline

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More Abu Dhabi Skyline from the Water
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And the Qasr Al Watan.

From the cruise we headed to the Observation Deck on the 74^th floor of the Etihad Towers. We had great 360° views of the entire city.

Emirates Palace

Fairmont Hotel

Qasr Al Watan

It turns out we had also paid for food up there as well so we had an early dinner (not too hungry, too bad). We split an egg salad sandwich and the split three desserts (they were pretty small).