Abu Dhabi

H is currently taking a nap, so I'll take this opportunity to show a few images of Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is the capital and the second largest city in the UAE and, thankfully, not where we will be living. Not that it wasn't nice, but it was extremely hot and VERY humid. Like 80-90% humidity on top of temperatures of 110+ degrees.

On our first day in Abu Dhabi, they took us on a "tour" of the city. This included a two hour stop at one of the malls, sitting in the parking lot of a palace and not being able to go in because we didn't have a reservation, and a quick visit to this mosque:

A quick wikipedia search tells me that this is Sheikh Zayed Mosque, the largest mosque in the UAE and the eighth largest in the world. Too bad this is all we got to see of it. It was closed, so we only got these few quick shots of the outside before everyone climbed back onto the bus. Overall, not a very well organized tour but it got us out of the hotel room for a few hours.

Abu Dhabi is a typical big city...lots of people, construction (H liked to call all of the cranes "dinosaurs"), and traffic. It seems like they've made a lot of efforts, though, to create parks and outdoor spaces for people to enjoy.

One evening, we decided to take a walk along the Persian/Arabian Gulf on the Corniche. It is a nice, paved walkway along the Gulf. We saw a lot of people out exercising--they must have a much higher tolerance than us because even at 7 p.m. we were sweating like crazy!

Here are a few images from our walk. All of the images look really hazy (I guess from the heat/humidity) but this is pretty much how it looked in "real" life too.

Along the Corniche, they had these rest areas covered with "sails" to create some shade.

H really enjoyed this walk since we were cooped up in the hotel most of the day--it was just too hot to go outside. We attempted a trip to the playground earlier in the day which lasted about 5 minutes total.

We left Abu Dhabi last Thursday and are now in Al Ain. It is still hot here, but much less humid...in other words tolerable. : ) This is where we will live for the next few years, though we are still waiting to hear about our apartment. Right now, we are staying at the Rotana Hotel. It's very nice and has an awesome pool, which H and I get to frequent every day while E goes to orientation in Abu Dhabi every day. Lucky us!