Visit to Al Ain

We have found our time on the weekends here to be, well, under-utilized. Without sports and other activities clogging the schedule and no projects to do in the flat where we are renting, we tend to bounce around the flat for much of the weekend. To alleviate some of the boredom, we decided spur of the moment last weekend that we would visit the city of Al Ain at the eastern edge of Abu Dhabi emirate bordering Oman.

So after church on Friday (yes, Friday) morning, we packed up and headed out to the desert for one night. As we do frequently, we based much of our activities on the recommendations from TripAdvisor.com. Our first stop was the Al Ain Zoo which is highly touted in the country. It is one of the few places that we have been affected by the country's conservative dress code. For the girls over 12 they were requested to have their knees and shoulders covered. Katrina was young enough to get in even though she was wearing shorts.

It was close to 100 degrees that day but we got there later in the afternoon so we were able to avoid the worst part of the day. I won't rave about the zoo because it was just an average place to visit. There were a few exhibits that we enjoyed a little more than others. We always like watching the small monkeys running around the enclosures and got to see a pair of white tigers up close. The exhibit that caught our attention most was the one with the African non-predatory animals (giraffes, zebras, etc). The background was the mountains that make up the border with Oman which made it quite memorable. Allison developed a fever as we trudged along so we ended the visit just a bit early to get her some rest.

Off we went to the hotel we booked for the night. The Grand Mercure hotel is perched at the top of Jebel Hafeet, the highest point in Abu Dhabi. The accommodations were reasonable but the view from the room was amazing. We faced out over the Al Ain and could see miles of sand dunes of different colors. Off to the one side we could see one of the palaces belonging to one of the ruling Sheikhs (at a higher elevation, of course). In the morning the girls spent some time playing in the hotel's water park and after we checked out, we went to the overlook at the end of the road just shy of the peak. I could have spent hours there looking at the formations but the kids wanted to move on to the next thing. Well, they wanted to leave that one at least.

The Sheikh's palace

There is a single road leading to the top of the mountain. A few magazines have called the road one of the best driving roads in the world and I can certainly see why. The girls were a little nervous going up and down, mostly due to the sharp turns and sharp drop offs, but we made it just fine.

The road to Jebel Hafeet

Our next stop was at Green Mubazarrah at the base of the mountain. There wasn't much to see and the warm springs were not very enticing due to the heat (107 that day). It was nice to see the greenery around all of the sand. Our last stop was at the Al Ain Oasis which was across the city. I imagine it was more of a place to see in the past but now it is just a bunch of palm trees, albeit a large bunch in the middle of the city.

View from within the Al Ain oasis

As we were walking back to our car, we encountered our only uncomfortable situation so far in the country. We were walking by a mosque and one of the locals tried to talk to us. He spoke no English and I speak no Arabic (I believe that is what he was speaking) so our conversation got nowhere.  He seemed agitated based on the hand motions he was making and there were not many people nearby so we quickly moved on to our car.

We took a different route back to Abu Dhabi and we are glad we did. It took a bit longer but it was filled with large dunes and scattered with roaming camels and a few camel farms. We never get tired of seeing camels and made multiple stops to take photos. Our last photo op was to see a group of camels that were starting to venture out on to the highway. After a minute, the farmer drove up on his very modern ATV and herded the animals back through the gate to the farm.

Pardon me!

Overall it was a nice place to visit and there are a few things we didn't get to see so we will go back at some point. The one thing we would change for the next visit is to do a bit more research and planning for which activities to do.

Note: I have discovered one of the limitations of using free blogging software. The images on this post are not particularly well arranged, but after fighting with the editor for a while, this is where I left it.