Exploring Abu Dhabi

Day 5 in the UAE -- I leave the morning of Day 7. So soon!

Days 2-3 were spent (mostly) traveling to Dubai for a New Year's Eve celebration (Paul Oakenfold DJing at the World Trade Center), which didn't turn out nearly as interesting as I'd hoped, and moreover didn't turn out to let me see much of the city. Evening 3 and Day 4 were spent exploring Abu Dhabi, and in about an hour I will go with my boyfriend and his mother for a much more thorough exploration of Dubai.

Abu Dhabi's economy is 90% oil-based, and it's fairly obvious that they don't quite give a rat's ass about tourism yet. :-) Yesterday we went to the main tourism "highlights" of the city -- an old fort which is the oldest building in Abu Dhabi (1793) and the "Heritage Village" which features a reproduction old Bedouin village and is supposed to describe what the area was really like before the oil and skyscraper train hit them. Either would have been far more interesting if there had been pamphlets or information posted somewhere --heck, in any language -- telling us what we were actually looking at, but the few workers we could find were worse than useless.

• Qasr al-Hosn (the Old Fort): Oldest building in Abu Dhabi meets the modern city.
  
  
• Heritage Village: "Excuse me sir, can you tell me if there is a camel to ride somewhere [as advertised] in this Bedouin village?" "Uh, no m'am." "Are there animals at all?" "Uh. no, sorry." 10 meters later, there is an uncaged camel along with caged donkey, caged horse, and caged dog (yes, dog), and 30 meters on the other side, there are cages full of goats, sheep, and a water buffalo. Thanks, guy.
  


• Formal Garden: One of many "garden" parks in the city, where my boyfriend's mother used to take him when he was a boy. Fantastic for small children I think -- everything from the normal slides and swingsets to huge moonwalk-type inflatable rides and games, and all this for 1 dirham (27 cent US) admission price in the middle of the city.
  
• Other things we didn't get to see much but are nice: The Emirates Palace hotel (most expensive hotel ever built, built specifically to be a meeting place for leaders of the Gulf Countries and foreign dignitaries) and the Corniche walkay along the northern edge of the island.
  

All in all Abu Dhabi is a nice little city though. Not a lot to see, but clean and compact, and being surrounded by water makes it more lovely. I wish it wasn't quite so commercial -- both Abu Dhabi and Dubai bombard you with advertisements literally every 20 feet on the roadways, but other than that, okay.

Dubai I haven't been too impressed with so far, though seeing it thoroughly today may change that. The prime development of the city is along one (Sheik Zayed) road, which means it's fairly one-dimensional, prone to high traffic, and completely unwalkable. The development rate is ridiculous --for every skyscraping hotel, you literally see 2-3 more being built. On the other hand, once that building is complete and there is less construction about, the skyline will be impressive and beautiful, if overwhelming. Right now there are only pieces here and there that stand out, the Burj Al-Arab hotel (I haven't seen it up close yet) and Emirates Towers included. On the sillier end -- Mall of the Emirates (the largest mall in the Middle East, complete with an indoor Ski Slope -- yes, really) and Burj Dubai, one of several buildings in the world claiming it will be the world's tallest, with actual plans not being released so no one will scoop them but rumors of 162 habitable floors -- 100 built so far.

More to get to later

• Signs in Abu Dhabi: "Buy one of our luxury apartments, and we'll throw in a free Jaguar". Que ridiculo. ;-)
• Posters everywhere of UAE's founder and late ruler, along with the current. Respect is nice, but this borderlines uncomfortable for me.
• More about division of the natives
• UAE's 90% ownership of Crabtree Valley Mall, my hometown mall a mile from where I grew up.
• Food
• Stray cats. They run around everywhere in both Abu Dhabi and Dhabi... kind of crazy when you see it.