As is often the case with group tours, there’s a long time between being picked up and actually starting the tour. Different groups are staying all over town and thus it’s always a bit of a prolonged, “we almost have everybody!” false promises.
But eventually we DID have everybody. A couple from Greece, two couples from the US, my Lithuanian couple, a pair of Netherland flight attendants on a longer than usual but still not long enough layover. Our guide was Adl from Egypt, a 25-year veteran of Egypt tours recruited by Oceania Tours 2 years ago. I wouldn’t call him a first round draft pick but he was ok.
The drive out to Abu Dhabi was about 80 minutes. Adl did a quick United Arab Emirates history and then said he knew some of us were jet lagged and wanted to nap. That may have been out of a courtesy to the flight attendants. To be honest, I was drifting in and out of consciousness during the history lesson.
Still, what I absorbed through my waking dream haze were these facts and figures:
- There are ten million people in the United Arab Emirates.
- Abu Dhabi is the capital and second largest city (after Dubai) and has 2.5 million people.
- The locals, those born and raised here, number 500,000, of which 75,000 are millionaires.
- The Emir of Abu Dhabi is the current president of the UAE.
- CCTV everywhere so don’t need too many cop cars patrolling. All is monitored on video.
- On top of that, the law is severe; there is low crimination because of the security system in place with strict rules and stricter enforcement. For example, the visa policy is very strict. Anyone coming to the UAE needs a sponsor on the visa – easily done and there’s a blind fee paid by the visa holder to the sponsor. The deal though is if something goes wrong, the sponsor is in the hook so if something does go wrong both the government and the sponsor will be on the hunt to resolve it.
- The falcon is the national bird of UAE. Whereas many western nations might have dogs or cats as pets, many UAE folks have falcons. Each falcon has a passport. There is a special cabin on Emirates Air planes just for falcons. The first one to board is the falcon and its owner. The falcon has a special hospital and boarding hotel in Dubai.
- The camel is national animal.
The first stop of the day was the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque. It’s the fourth largest mosque in the world, behind Mecca, Medina, and Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca.
The Grand Mosque can accommodate 40,000 people for prayer services. It was built from 199-2006… but Sheik Zayed passed away in 2004 thus never got to see it completed. He is buried on site though.
The construction cost was one billion US dollars. Nothing but the most expensive materials and fixtures were used. Marble from Italy; twenty-four carot gold imlays, the costliest and therefore finest crystal chandeliers. Spared no expense.
And yet having spared no expense, the water fountains were a major disappointment. I know culturally room temperature water is the preferred service so I guess I can’t take assign a cold level score to it. But given that I felt like the water fountain has to have accounted for at least a part of a billion dollar construction — well, I would’ve expected something more. I’m giving it a 3 and I think that’s generous…
As is the custom, women had to be covered so some of the tourists had to don black dresses and scarves. The men couldn’t be in shorts and were issued white taubs to wear. I was in jeans and a shirt so was fine. And I know I have to be respectful of other cultures and beliefs but I did have to bite my tongue by the separate but equal entries split along gender lines. The same thing happened at the buffet dinner last night — one line for men, one line for women. Here it made slightly more sense as gender appropriate security could deal with people who set off the metal detectors… but just as last night, the separate lines converged before too long and it just seemed silly if I’m being generous to my beliefs or wrong if I’m being truthful with my opinions.
As for the building itself, it’s an impressive thing to be sure and I have no doubt when packed to the sides with 40,000 Muslims practicing their faith it would make even more an impression. As it was currently operating in its tourism capacity it felt a bit stagey but that didn’t deter from me and countless other tourists snapping away on our digital cameras. Here’s a series of shots, including the proper mosque etiquette signage. I want to be clear here – I find most graphic info signs to be hilarious mainly because I like to imagine the drafts involved to get approval for whatever design that is now currently on display. Some of the art design is just inscrutable and some of the art design is so spot on that you wish whoever was designing that panel was in charge of a lot more. In any case, here’s a bunch of respectful shots, as we were told orally and in signage to be respectful. I never have a problem with that in any revered place but I do find that I sometimes am so consumed with NOT making a face or doing something with my hands that I come across even more comical as I fumble with trying NOT to be disrespectful.
From the mosque, we headed on a quick driving tour of Abu Dhabi. A driveby shooting… that’s wrong… a driveby stop to shoot some quick pics of the Emirate’s Palace afforded the bonus photo opportunity to snap a shot of the Fast and Furious 7 setpiece locale, the Etiad Tower. So here’s a few shots from there.
Just a quick side note on stats for the Emirate’s Palace, something to give perspective to the wealth we were looking at.
- There’s a private bridge built just for the Emir’s family to get to one of the island palaces.
- Each year the Emirate’s Palace has an opulent Christmas tree; one year it was valued at 11 million US dollars while this year’s tree had diamond trimmings and pushed the valuation to 20 million US dollars.
- They’re building a massive museum on one of the Abu Dhabi islands and it’s modeled after the Louvre… so much so that the Emir paid 400 million US dollars to license the Louvre name. So opening soon is The Louvre Abu Dhabi.
A 30-minute tourist trap stop at the Heritage Museum, a sorta lip service cultural center to Abu Dhabi in the pre-oil expansion of the 1960s, did provide one of my favorite photos of a photo. This framed picture of what the city looked like in 1960 makes for a great comparison to the panoramic I shot on the beach just at the edge of the Heritage Museum.
From here, we stopped at a wholesale fruits and vegs marketplace warehouse. The date is life in the desert. The one thing that seems to grow in the desert is the palm and the fruit of the palm is the date. So if you’re starving in the desert, the date is what will save you. In fact, the prophet Mohammed recommends eating dates after breaking the fasts of Ramadan to help regain strength. They’re tasty, filling, and seemingly have a lot of nutrients in the calories. But can anyone hear dates and not think of that traitorous monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark who gets hoisted by his owner’s petard in trying to poison Indiana Jones? Sallah saves the famed archeologist from eating them and then we get this iconic moment:
I have to say, I tried a couple of varieties and they were all pretty good. I picked up a couple of bags of chocolate covered ones to give as gifts… I must have bought a fair number as the guy threw in another bag on top of what I had in my hand when I paid.
Quick stat side note: the United Arab Emirates is the number one date producer in the world. They import 90% of their fruit and veggies, but they export a ton of dates.
***
Reda and Ilona had booked us the deluxe tour package that included admission to Ferrari World. I thought it was a museum dedicated to the famed Italian sportscar… and it kinda was. But in reality it was an indoor theme park with crazy high speed roller coasters that I didn’t get in line for plus a weird mini-museum and the occasional “family rides.” Ferrari World is on the island of Yas; Abu Dhabi is actually made up of 200 natural islands (as opposed to the man made palms and world globe islands of Dubai). Much like the Florida Keys, you can get to the various islands via interconnected highways.
Ferrari World was probably a waste of money as one look at the 240km/h in 5 seconds acceleration of the Formula Rossa ride and the inverted loop-de-loops and nearly perpendicular drops of Flying Aces turned my stomach and I didn’t even go on them. But I did avail myself of a few of the family rides. We only had two hours while other folks went to have lunch so the crowds made it a bit of a limited options excursion. On top of that, I realized just how hustled I had been.
Knowing I wouldn’t be having lunch, I bought a chicken avocado wrap at the mosque for 32 dirham. I needed something though and the airport prices seemed the right play. Once we got to the mall of Yas that housed both Ferrari World and restaurants and outlet stores, Adl the guide recommended Buca di Beppo – their lunch special was an app, entree and drink for 35 AED. Yeah, I got screwed at the billion dollar mosque. I guess they gotta make up for the falling oil prices somehow.
Anyhoo, I rode a lame, slow Autopia style car ride through little Italy called Bell’Italia. This was actually the longest wait I had in the theme park – it took about 30 minutes to get on the ride and the experience of the putt-putt-jagging faux-Ferrari cars was underwhelming to say the least.
From there I tried the Scuderia Challenge, a VR motion simulator game wherein four people competed driving around the race track. The nice attendant was handing out timing cards to come back but when she found out I was solo and had to leave at 5 PM, she backdoor’d me into the next event. I realized I suck at video games. But here’s me in the sim before they made me secure my phone.
In a less successful version of Disney’s Soarin’ hang glider attraction, Viaggio in Italia has the flying chairs, the IMAX screen, the 4-D sights and smells… but it just feels oddly cheap. Maybe because I was on the edge and was getting a real warped perspective on the film but to be honest, the soundtrack was generic wah-wah and the final image was flying into the red Ferrari logo… it just sorta hung there as we did before the chairs powered down back to earth. I’d give it a shrug.
And while I will shrug the last ride as well, I also kinda loved it in a bizarr-o world way. In Benno’s Great Race, you have a Wii-mote wrench thing that you point and click at computer screens a la Toy Story Midway Mania at Disney to interact with the dark ride components. The goal is to help the animal world’s biggest Ferrari Fan defeat his nemesis in a road race. That fan’s name? Benno the Mouse:
With time short, I exited the park through the gift shop (somebody’s REALLY been studying their theme parks). I ALMOST bought a magnet from Benno’s Great Race as I thought it’d be funny to have on my fridge.
You know how much this magnet cost? 50 dirham… or $13.61. I did not buy it.
Returning back to Dubai, I tried summarizing things and drafting this entry. It’s a bit chaotic and disjointed but then so was this tour. An odd mix of the traditional and the modern, maybe the weird juxtaposition of a holy place that cost a billion dollars with an indoor theme park befits the image of the United Arab Emirates perfectly.
In my mad dash to get things down before I forgot them, and to get things uploaded before the next day’s adventures, I worry I have done a massive disservice to the experiences. But hopefully a flavor is captured, a gist that like a pebble tossed into a sea of memory inspires ripples of memories down the line.
Before I upload this though, a quick guide to Islam and the UAE flag from Adl. The Five Pillars of Islam I vaguely recall going over in a comparative history class in high school.
According to Adl, the five pillars of Islam are
- This is only one god and Mohammed is His prophet.
- One should pray five times a day facing Mecca.
- One should give a tithe of 2.5% of income every year. This tithe is called zakat.
- During the Month of Ramada, one must fast from sunrise to sunset
- Optional for those who can afford it — at least once in a lifetime, one should make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
And just enough time for a quick recap of the colors of the UAE flag: red, white, green, and black:
They represent, according to Adl (and then elaborated on via Wikipedia in parantheses):
- Red – strength (also hardiness, bravery, strength and courage
- White – peace (and honesty)
- Green – hope, (joy, love and optimism)
- Black – oil (also defeat of enemies and strength of mind) but mostly oil.
