Christmas in Abu Dhabi (16pics)

Abu Dhabi. from December 20, 2023 to December 24, 2023



Greetings, friends.
What is the most difficult part of the journey? It seems to me that regardless of the length of the trip, the most important and difficult thing is to find time to tell your family and friends about everything we saw on the trip. And it's even harder to start writing an article about this journey.
And what is the most difficult thing in writing an article? Find the most attractive title photo. I decided to use the main picture to take the very first photo that I took with a camera in Abu Dhabi.
But I'll start in order. Our friendly company took off from Moscow at 7:50 a.m. The plane landed in Abu Dhabi half an hour ahead of schedule. We were met by a bus that took us to the hotel. It took about an hour to check in and our guide took us to lunch, which could already be called dinner. Our flight lasted 6 hours and during that time no one fed us on the plane. This is a feature of Pobeda Airlines.
The restaurant where we tasted delicious dishes and even camel meat was located opposite the most interesting tourist spots, which looked beautiful against the background of the rapidly setting sun.






Trips to various interesting places at the end of the year have already become traditional for our company. But we have never flown so far from Moscow as this year. The longest trip before this year was to Barcelona and on that trip on the first day we all went to the sea. So this time in the evening, I took a walk along the embankment as part of 6 people, and my roommate and I decided that we would go swimming in the morning.
Here it is the Persian Gulf. 5 minutes and we were on the beach. Yes, we tried to test the water in the evening, but the guards chased us away because the beach is open from 7 a.m. until sunset. We came to the beach at 12 at night. There is no such restriction in our country.
The water was just amazing! It's the end of December, but I'm swimming in the sea. In my region, even in summer, the water temperature in the river is lower than in Abu Dhabi in December. My every morning started with a visit to the beach. But I think I'll try to tell you about it separately. Probably the first time in my life I did a photo shoot on the beach.



Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental
An amazing hotel! Surprisingly, tourists are taken there to show the beauty of this place. You can even go into the central hall, where there is a Christmas tree. Here I want to say that in Russia many people and even some of my friends are very hostile to the "Catholic Christmas". They think it's the wrong date, that the right Christmas is on January 7th. In Abu Dhabi, I saw how Muslims rejoice at this holiday.



We named these skyscrapers "Moscow City" because they are very similar to the complex with that name in Moscow. The difference is that there is a large flag here. In this country, you can see a lot of flags and portraits of sheikhs, the ruling dynasty, and the founder of the state.
Our countries have similar systems of political governance - unity of command, but the results of this rule are very different. Both our states have the main income from the oil trade, but... Russia still has natural gas, forests, rivers, gold, diamonds and many other natural resources that are missing in the UAE, but the difference in infrastructure is huge and it is definitely not in favor of Russia!



Qasr Al Watan
The Presidential Palace, the palace of the great Sheikh. It is also called the People's Palace. Many people visit it everyday and inspect almost all the rooms and chambers of this palace. You can look at the meeting room, at the banquet hall, where even our president ate. Everything is available.
I was in the Kremlin, but only a small part is available there and there are people in uniform standing around. You just don't notice this in the Abu Dhabi Palace. There are simple museum workers. It's a joke, of course, but it feels exactly the same.









The Louvre Museum.Of course, this museum cannot be compared with the Louvre in Paris. There are not many exhibits here, but I think there will be many more.
The museum building itself, the roof of the museum, is very interesting. It resembles an old house in the desert, covered with palm leaves.

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre is one of the six largest mosques in the world. It is named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder and first president of the United Arab Emirates, who is buried nearby.
The mosque is located almost on the opposite side of the city from the Sheikh's Palace, far from the sea. I think this is also symbolic. The desert is originally what was here 60 years ago. One sand. And now the city is beautiful, with a lot of green trees and bushes.
In the mosque, tourists are allowed to visit the large men's prayer hall, which is located in the center of the mosque. On the sides, there are men's and women's prayer rooms, where only Muslim believers are allowed to enter.
There are several restrictions in terms of clothing for visiting this mosque, especially for women. Access to the mosque is through an underground passage. A very beautiful place! I was delighted.

Especially active members of our team visited the embankment every evening. I believe that you need to sleep at home, and when traveling you need to get the most out of such places. When I went on a trip from my house, I had a temperature of -20 degrees, even there were frosts almost under 40 degrees, and here on the embankment even at night the temperature is + 23 degrees. I can't miss this opportunity.