Exploring Abu Dhabi

After we woke up refreshed from our nap, we headed out to check out the first of many malls we visited during our trip.  The UAE has no shortage of fancy malls, but the first one we stopped at wasn't too impressive.  We grabbed lunch at Fuddruckers, one of our favorite US chains, and then walked out by the water to a small village-like area where the girls had a great time running around in the grass and picking up garbage.

After kind of striking out at our first stop on the trip, we grabbed a taxi and went to the Corniche which I think is the stretch of road that fronts the beach area in the main part of Abu Dhabi.  The weather was beautiful and we found a nice playground right by the beach where the girls enjoyed running around for about 45 minutes.  We walked around the beach area for a while longer and got some drinks and ice cream before heading out to grab dinner at another mall on the way back to our hotel.

After walking around for a while, we decided on PF Chang's because there is a shortage of totally unauthentic Chinese food in Tokyo and because it's one of Annie's faves.  We had a pretty enjoyable dinner and were pretty tired by that time so headed back to the hotel in a taxi and got the girls ready for bed and watched a show or two before calling in a day.

Apparently this is the only picture I took on this day - travel blogging skills on point!!

The next morning, we walked over to a nearby grocery store to pick up some things for breakfast and tried to decide what to do for the day.  We are not very good at having plans before we go on a vacation, which I think is one of the main reasons we sort to a beach vacation since your choices pretty much revolve around pool or beach.  City exploration in foreign countries is tough with our two travel companions!

In a split second decision, we decided to head over to Yas Island and visit Ferrari World.  Since Joe likes to see other theme parks for work, it seemed like it would be a waste to come this far and not go and check it out.  We are very glad we did because we had a great time.  It was about a 25 minute taxi ride to the Yas Island Mall, which was giant and incredible.  

Ferrari World is basically at one end of the mall and was very well done and looked pretty classy.  The tickets were reasonable but not cheap, but you could easily have a nice four or five hour experience there if you plan your time well.  It is entirely indoors except for the roller coaster (the world's fastest!) which starts and ends inside but has the entire thrill portion of the track outside.  The structure is enormous and is essentially a mini theme park entirely indoors.

A picture of the outside of Ferrari World - doesn't do justice to how massive it was

O My Buns, just because

Getting ready to enter Ferrari World!

The girls had a lot of fun on the Ferrari ride through Italy, the indoor play place and sampling a variety of snacks.  Annie was tall enough to drive the mini-Ferraris but Lizzy just missed the height cutoff which made her really sad.  A pretzel quickly cheered her up.  Annie got to drive some cars when at Universal Studios Japan so she was ultra-confident on this attraction and did it three or four times.  It was great.

A happy little driver

Lizzy wouldn't let me touch her or the steering wheel during the ride

Annie and Joe when on a Soarin'-like ride and then we all got together to go to one of the three Ferrari-theme live action shows with dancers and stunt people.  It was pretty good but we thought that they were reaching a bit too far at times to make everything car related.  We went to another show that had an incredible polar bear like character that we still aren't 100% sure if it was real or fake.  There was an entire winter wonderland area where the girls had a great time playing in the fake snow until some poorly behaved child projectile vomited all over the place and we had to evacuate.

It's snowing in the desert!

Our angels making snow angels

Lizzy was especially excited to get her face painted and daddy generously allowed it since the price was $0.  I'm not sure why she was wearing a swim shirt at this point but her previous outfit must have been ruined somehow!

I took Annie ice skating which was completely impossible and horrible, but I think she had a good time.

Probably the least fun portion of the entire trip

Before we left, we wanted to go check out the roller coaster but the line was nearly three hours.  There was a great viewing platform over the launch area so we got a feel for it watching it take off five or six times.  It was fast. I really regret not immediately getting in line for this when we entered the park. The coaster goes 0-60 in a few seconds and reaches 150 miles per hour! I guess it's always good to leave something for next time. 

We wandered around the gigantic mall for a while and ended up at Shake Shake for dinner.   It was amazing and expensive, but totally worth it.  The girls were tired by this time so we started to head out.  We had a bit of a challenging time finding a taxi but after a brief tour of the mall, we found one and took the 25 minute ride back to the Holiday Inn.

It ended up being a really fun day and we were very glad we headed out to Yas Island to see all the fun stuff they have built out there.  Not sure how they are making money from any of it, but we appreciate the fact that it was built (Hansel).

We woke up the next morning and felt the need to do something cultural so we went to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque about 15 minutes from our hotel.  The Grand Mosque is the largest in the UAE and can hold up to 40,000 people.  The fog that day was like nothing we had ever seen.  It was so bad that you couldn't see 50 feet in front of you, so it made the taxi ride a bit stressful but we arrived in one piece.  It also created massive delays at the airport and kept passengers on one plane for nearly 24 hours.

We were very worried about doing something wrong and offensive while visiting the Mosque  especially since an American pop star and her friends had taken some disrespectful photos there a few days prior and it was all over the news.  I had to go down to an area in the basement to get more appropriate clothing, but Joe and the girls were dressed suitably. The mosque was gorgeous and huge, at least the portion we could see.  The fog was so thick we couldn't see the entire structure at any one point.  We wandered around inside for a while in our socks and tried not to doing anything impolite. After about 90 minutes, the girls had had enough so I returned my clothing and we grabbed a taxi to head back to the hotel and check out.  I wasn't sad to say goodbye to the Holiday Inn (snob alert!).  Joe thought it was great and would have happily lived there.

We packed up, checked out (no bill since the hotel had been paid for with some IHG points we had sitting around from years ago) and jumped in a taxi for the 25 minute ride out to Saadiyat Island where we would spend the next 4 nights.

Unrelated, but just wanted to point out that televised camel racing is a real thing and amazing