Two Days in Abu Dhabi
A few months ago we packed up our life in Sydney and left, and Abu Dhabi was the first stop on what turned out to be a very long and scenic route to a new home.
Not that we’d chosen it particularly. It came attached to the flight. Etihad has this program where if you’re already routing through, they’ll throw in a couple of nights at a hotel, and since we already were, we said yes without giving it much thought.
The stopover itself was a godsend. Anyone who has flown out of Australia will know exactly what I mean, because it is a very long way to anywhere, and the older I get the less willing I am to do the whole thing in one hit and land somewhere completely wrecked. Breaking the flight in half has stopped being a nice idea and started being the only way to do it.
The one complication was the timing. The Strait of Hormuz, that narrow channel where the Gulf meets the open sea, and one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, had been all over the news that week, and the whole region felt tense because of it. So choosing that particular moment to stop and linger for two days seemed, on paper, like odd timing. But it was a free hotel and I am only human, so we went. What we found on the ground was gentler than the headlines had led me to expect.
So we leaned into it because a city being too quiet is not the worst problem to have when you've got two days and nowhere in particular to be.
We started with Qasr Al Hosn, the oldest stone building in the city and the place the rest of Abu Dhabi grew up around. It went up in the late 1700s. It grew into a fort, and then into the ruling family’s home and the seat of government and it stayed the ruling family’s seat right up until the 1960s. It only reopened as the museum it is now in 2018, after years of restoration. Standing in front of it with the modern city right behind it, I kept thinking about how comfortably the two coexist. The oldest building in the city, with the newest ones going up all around it, and somehow neither looks out of place.
Then we went over to the new fish market. It’s a new build, though the trade going on inside it obviously isn’t, and it was far quieter than you’d expect a fish market to be. No tourists at all. Just vendors working through the day the same way they would have whether or not we’d walked in. It was the most local anything had felt since we landed.
By early afternoon the heat had beaten us, thoroughly. So we went back to the hotel and lay under the air conditioning like two people who had badly underestimated the weather, which we absolutely had.
We came back out in the evening for the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and very nearly missed the sunset, arriving right as the light was going, doing that thing where you’re speed-walking and pretending you’re not.
It didn’t matter though. The mosque at night was worth it on its own. All that white stone lit up against a dark blue sky, and so much more expansive than any photo prepares you for. Inside, the marble was cool underfoot and the whole place had gone quiet in a way that felt deliberate, people lowering their voices without being asked. I stood in one of the long hallways for far longer than I meant to, just looking up. We didn’t feel like we’d missed out on anything.
The second day we drove out into the desert to go dune bashing, which is a very fun little phrase for being flung down the side of a sand dune in a 4x4 by a man who is having the time of his life while I'm clinging on for dear life. And then of course I had to get the quintessential photo on a camel, because hello, I’m in Abu Dhabi, it’s a must.
That was Abu Dhabi. Two days, which was exactly as much as we needed and not a day more, and then we got back on a plane.
Albania came next on that same long route home, and that one I’m still not done talking about. But that’s a story for another post.
If you go
If you’re flying Etihad and routing through anyway, look into their free stopover program before you book anything else, because a couple of nights in Abu Dhabi may already be sitting there waiting for you. Two days really is enough for a first visit, so don’t feel like you have to cram.
Take the midday heat seriously. We didn’t, and it sent us back to the hotel by early afternoon. Do your walking and your outdoor sights early, then save the middle of the day for something indoors. Leave the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque for the end of the day and aim to be there before sunset, both for the light and because it is at its most beautiful once the lights come on. The dress code for women is strict: loose clothing that covers you to the wrists and ankles, plus a headscarf. Check the mosque’s current policy before you go, as they no longer lend abayas the way they once did, so you may need to bring your own covering or buy one there (that’s what I did!).
If you only have time for one dose of history, make it Qasr Al Hosn. Entry is inexpensive, and standing in front of the oldest building in the city with the skyline right behind it is the quickest way to understand how new all of this really is. And yes, do the dune bashing and the camel photo out in the desert. It’s touristy and I loved every second of it.
