Travels during Eid: Abu Dhabi

The first place we went during our Eid break was Abu Dhabi.  There was some confusion about place names when I first explained our placement to people, so just so everyone's clear about how the geography is set up here please permit me this brief aside.

The United Arab Emirates is a grouping of seven emirates, kind of like states in the U.S.  The largest emirate is Abu Dhabi.  The capital of of the UAE and of the emirate of Abu Dhabi is the city of Abu Dhabi.  So, it's kind of like Kansas.  There's the state of Kansas that also has Kansas City in it.  We live in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, but not in the city of Abu Dhabi.  Keeping with the Kansas analogy, we live next to Dorothy and Auntie Em.

So we went to the city of Abu Dhabi.  We'd been there several times since I arrived, but never as a tourist.  We always went there on some kind of errand/mission to tick as much off of our to-do list as we could then come home.  This time was going to be different, this time we were going to see the sights and drink in the culture, this time we were going to be tourists and take pictures.  This time we started at Ikea.  Again.  Then went to Ace Hardware.  Again.  But that was fine!  Our next few shops were local souqs one of which had been a trading hub for nearly a thousand years!  So we headed for Abu Dhabi's Central Souq.

It is located right downtown in a rat's nest of one-way streets and construction.  It took us several U-turns and trips around the same roundabout to get to it, but we finally did.  We made it to the underground parking and took the elevator up to the souq itself.  I thought to myself, "Ok, so they've renovated it a bit, I'm sure the original traders didn't park their camel caravans underground and take an elevator to the trading stalls, but this'll still be good!"  And, at first, I wasn't wrong.

The "souq" (which I have come to think of as having quotation marks around it because it's not what I think of as a souq, as a matter of fact I've seen French marchés that look more like what I picture a souq to be) was air-conditioned.  The architecture was very interesting, though, and reminiscent of a more traditional souq.  The stores on the ground floor sold an interesting mix of kitschy gifts and gorgeous high-end products.  Bobbi bought a dress kind of like a caftan from one of the stores, and we bought a little "Aladdin's lamp" from another store.  They had shirts with pictures of camel crossing signs and hand etched and painted tea sets, decks of cards with the Burj Khalifa pictured on the back and gilded framed janbiya daggers.  It was a very interesting mix.  There were also stores selling spices from huge canvas sacks all over the place.

After leaving the Central Souq we went to get a birthday present for my mom.  We knew what we wanted to get her, a Pandora bead that is only sold in two places in the world, one store in Abu Dhabi and one store in Dubai.  It's a little silver camel that is kneeling.  We thought that would be a unique gift from our adventure here!  We also got her some camel milk chocolate in a decorative wooden box.  Here's a picture of her camel charm on her bracelet!

After all that shopping we decided to get some food, we were starving!  Oddly enough, there weren't many choices in the huge mall we were in, so we opted for........

OLIVE GARDEN!

Crazy, huh!?  I had the endless soup, salad and breadsticks and Bobbi had the Chicken Alfredo and it tasted just like back home!  We'd been doing a lot of adventurous eating, trying Arabic restaurants all the time, it was nice to have something familiar.

After dinner we went to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.  I've already posted the pictures on Facebook and Flickr, so I'll just link them here.  The mosque was mind-blowingly beautiful, though.  I know that a lot of people have been impressed with the pictures I posted of it, but I really am not sure if the pictures do it justice.  It's so hard to capture the scale of the place in photos.  It's absolutely massive!  And every square inch is ornately gorgeous!  

After the mosque we headed back home.  It had been a full, wonderful, exhausting day!