Middle East Adventure...Part 4

On Sunday I took a taxi from Dubai up to Abu Dhabi. Sunday is actually a work day for the UAE but they ended up having a religious holiday on Sunday (and they only announced it one week prior so I couldn't plan for it). But this did mean I ended up with an extra day to explore. The cab only cost $65 and it took me about an hour and a half (hotel to hotel). Not a bad deal. The other option would have been a bus which would have taken over 2hrs and only costs pennies... Dubai is all about luxury so I figured might as well go for it. Plus this way I had some extra time to lay out by the pool Sunday morning. The pool was actually packed - it doesn't matter what time it is, the sun is so strong you could get some color anytime, and it's so hot that it would be warm enough to layout all day. As a side note: I did not come home with a tan. I slathered on 50 spf the whole time in fear of getting fried, and I ended up staying completely white.

Last photo in Dubai

I spent my afternoon in Abu Dhabi wandering around. I tried to find their Gold Souk but I'm not sure I actually found it -- it was pretty much just a mall with a few gold shops in it. Not as cool as Dubai's. I checked out a few local shops -- including the tiniest book shop ever. And then I wandered farther down the Corniche to the public beach. The rules here in Abu Dhabi are much stricter than in Dubai - they had signs and "guards" to make sure you cover back up before leaving the beach area. And they have a "private" beach next to the public one... public = free, private = $5 or so to go in to separate the riff raff from the higher classes. (I hung out with the riff raff at the public beach.) I didn't go swimming - my experience in Dubai taught me that 100 degree water isn't fun to swim in, but I did have fun people watching.

After Sunday Funday I had one day left of work before flying back home. One of my co-workers in the Middle East office, Anurag, offered to take me to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. (If he hadn't offered I would have gone anyway - it was most definitely on my list of must-see places.) It is the largest mosque in the UAE and can hold 40,000 people for prayer. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Zayed_Mosque

The require all women to wear robes and use scarves to cover their hair and they are thoughtful enough to give them to you when you get there. It was such a cool / wonderful / amazing experience. I could talk so much about it but I'll just show you some of the neat pictures I took instead.

This last pic I took from the cab on the way to the airport. My flight on Monday was at 10:30pm. I was originally planning to spend some time at our Amsterdam office so my original flights were Abu-Dhabi to Amsterdam (with a layover in Frankfurt) and then I would fly home from Amsterdam to Des Moines (with a layover in Des Moines) a few days later. But since my Amsterdam visit got cancelled I tried to reschedule my flights home. Unfortunately it was crazy expensive to get a direct flight back to Des Moines form Abu Dhabi so the cheapest thing was to pay $250 and just push my flights together. This resulted in an afternoon/evening layover in Amsterdam. My trip to Amsterdam was a bit of blur but I managed to take a lot of pictures :)   Now since I'm actually writing this post in October after my second trip to Amsterdam, I will just wait to describe everything all together :)

So this finally concludes my Middle East Adventure!