Abu Dhabi – a stopover

The offer of a free stopover that included accommodation and cheaper than usual prices was what made us pick Etihad for a trip to India from the UK. It was our first time flying Etihad and also our first visit to a country in the Gulf of Arabia. It was also our first trip without Shash and we consoled ourselves saying it was just a stopover!

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Booking a stopover

Booking a stopover was easy. Once the origin and destination (which has to be a third country) was entered, Etihad allows choosing a stopover during the onward journey or on return. We preferred return and were given many options for connecting flights. We chose the one that would give us at least one day in Abu Dhabi and wasn’t prohibitively expensive either.

To book a hotel we had to use our booking confirmation in the stopover page in Etihad’s website and the system showed the options for the days we would be in Abu Dhabi based on the number of people in our itinerary. For a long time there was no availability and I had almost booked at another hotel before we saw two options popping up. It was only a few weeks before our trip. We were offered a choice of Premier Inns and we chose the one in city center.

We needed a visa for our Indian passport which can also be applied online through the Etihad website. We wanted to get the free 48 hour transit visa. Since our flights were timed in such a way that we would exceed 2 calendar days, we opted to pay and get a single entry transit visa. The process was straight forward and we got our visas by email pretty soon.

Arriving at Abu Dhabi

The airport was quite chaotic with no clear lines at immigration and people jumping queues. Sam started to get upset and another passenger intervened and asked us to go to the special line that was empty. Turned out we didn’t need the print outs of our visa and we were quickly processed before we got collected our luggage and changed some Stirling Pounds to AED at the baggage reclaim area.

It was a very busy airport but there were enough staff to assist. Our first surprise was the dispatcher at the taxi ranks! He spoke Tamil and waved us to a taxi! Most taxis accept cards for payment and we preferred to use our UK bank card for paying saving the little Dirhams for small transactions.

We were dropped off at the Premier Inn City Center few minutes later and were given two adjacent rooms with an interconnecting door. The rooms were of the usual Premier Inn standard in the UK and with the usual amenities plus two bottles of water! There was a minimart and a Costa Coffee right next door and this came in handy! The mini mart had a deli counter and they served some good vegetarian food at reasonable prices too.

Living a few years in the UK meant we were allergic to the sun! The day dawned bright albeit way too bright for me and I started having a headache right in the morning. I had to check-in for our flight to London and I chatted with the service desk to check-in and get assigned seats together.

We had a quick breakfast of croissants and coffee in Costa before buying some water and lemonade in the minimart. We then hailed a taxi off the street and made our way to our first stop in the itinerary.

The Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque 

Free tickets for entry have to be booked online and we booked them a few weeks before our trip. The dress code is very strict and their website has all the details. We were dropped off at the other end of the car park and were wondering if we needed to walk in the hot sun towards the mosque when the driver indicated that we needed to go down and access the mosque from the basement. When we went down the escalators we realised there was a huge mall underground. Entrance to the mosque was at one end of the mall.

Despite getting myself a full sleeved salwar the person verifying our tickets said that wasn’t allowed as it was supposedly “transparent”. Sam’s was fine. I was directed to a shop selling abaya. They gave me three colour choices in the cheapest option (£13) and I picked pink. The lady at the shop helped me with it and we made our way to the entrance once again. After scanning the codes of our tickets we went through a security check and made our way through a long passage with travelators and pictures of the history of the mosque on the walls.

Sheik Zayed, after whom the mosque is named, was the founder of UAE. The mosque/s construction began in 1996 and was opened for prayers in 2007. The huge domed structure made of white marble had artisans from many different countries working on it. 

The harsh sun wasn’t agreeing with me and the abaya added to my heat woes. The crowd wasn’t too heavy but there were a lot of people. The guards were strict about the dress code and ensured our heads were kept covered at all times. We took the path that tourists were meant to take snapping a lot of pictures along the way. We walked around the courtyard to the main prayer halls. They had intricately woven rugs and beautiful chandeliers. There were motifs of flowers and vines on the walls and floors and some stained glass windows too. The carpet in the main prayer hall was supposedly the world’s largest hand-knotted carpet. It is 5,400 square meters in size, weights 35 tons and is made of wool and cotton.

My iPhone also started heated up and displayed a warning and I had to remove it from its case to let it cool down. We then made our way back down to the basement where we were whisked on a golf cart back to the entrance. I was finally happy to be rid of the abaya and be back in air-conditioning! 

The souvenir shop appeared overpriced and we decided to seek souvenirs elsewhere. There was a food court in the mall and we made our way over to have lunch. With my headache worse since morning I decided to play safe and have an Indian lunch while CS and Sam opted a Subway sandwich. The food was pretty good and we slowly recovered from the fatigue of staying out in the sun.

It was too hot to visit anywhere outside so we decided to visit another indoor attraction. We were lured by the pictures of the Presidential Palace, Qasr al watan, on tourist magazines. We hadn’t booked tickets and decided to get them when there. We took a taxi from the rank and the driver being a Nepali, was very chatty. 

Qasr Al Watan

The presidential palace was massive and very well organised. Though it’s called a palace this wasn’t where the president lived. This was where visiting dignitaries, heads of other countries and other guests of the state are hosted for meetings and banquets. It was completed in 2017 and was opened to the public in 2019. 

There were separate entrances for ticket and non ticket holders. There wasn’t much of a queue and we walked up to purchase our tickets and went through security before boarding a coach to take us to the entrance of the Palace. We were dropped off at the entrance after a five minute ride and were free to explore the palace on our own.

Right from the entrance doors the whole palace was massive. The foyer, the great hall, and the hallways were all ornately decorated. The great hall has a massive dome in the middle. The wing on the right has a library. The wing on the left has a display of gifts from different countries, a banquet hall and a meeting hall called the spirit of collaboration. In the middle of the spirit of collaboration hangs a huge chandelier that has been made with 350,000 pieces of crystal. The ceilings and walls had extensive plaster work in colours of blue, green and gold and ornamental chandeliers hung from them.

Once we walked through all the areas and admired the massive, studded palace we made our way out to catch a glimpse of a few of Abu Dhabi’s sky scrapers along the corniche. We rode the bus back before grabbing a taxi to return to our hotel. 

Dinner and shopping

We waited for the sun to go down before we decided to venture out. We took a taxi to Madinat Zayed shopping mall for dinner. One part of the mall had rows of shops that were selling gold! I’ve heard about the gold shops in the Middle East and it was fascinating to look at the different intricately designed pieces of jewellery in the gleaming metal. We then made our way up to Saravana Bhavan – 7th country that we were dining in! We also visited the Lulu hypermarket in the mall to buy some souvenirs and a cabin luggage as we found it to be of good value.

What was surprising was the amount of South Indians in these places. We could get by just speaking in Tamil most of the time!

We returned for one last time to Premier Inn to rest, pack and catch a taxi around midnight for our early morning Etihad flight to London.

Travel notes

We used our UK debit card (that has no foreign transaction charges) for most transactions. AED was just a stand by and was not needed in most of the places. Vegetarian food was plenty and easy to come by simply because of the staggering amount of Indian restaurants. The sun is really harsh. I felt it was harsher than other tropical countries I had visited. Sun glasses didn’t help much with the glare either.

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