After meeting Kate’s friends, Anna and Ray, it’s official, I’ve decided the best thing about the UAE are clearly all of Kate’s friends. Ray lives in downtown Abu Dhabi and graciously let us crash at his place. We stayed up late chatting, and then when we got up in the morning, Anna (another awesome friend of Kate’s) was adamant we had to go on “The history of the UAE” ride. It was something of a joke, like a “Does this kind of ride really exist” kind of adventure. We found it. It exists. Not only did we go on it, but we got escorted out of the (mostly closed) park by security when we cut through to get back to the car. We got in trouble again when visiting the Grand Mosque for attempting to take a picture with our arms around each other, “No hugging!” a guard yelled out at us! We immediately dropped our arms to our sides and it became a theme for all subsequent group pictures.
Just in case you were wondering why we were so covered, the Mosque had abayas available for scantily clad (exposed heads/shoulders/legs) female visitors like ourselves. An abaya is a loose over garment robe-like piece of clothing worn by some (sometimes all) women in Middle Eastern countries and/or in Islamic countries and especially in mosques.
The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque was named after the founder of the UAE. Most things in Abu Dhabi are named after him. It can be a little confusing. So, most people referred to it as the Grand Mosque. It covers an area the size of five football fields, holding up to 40,000 people. The opulence inside the Mosque was unbelievable. When I searched for more information about the Mosque, I found a really great blog post that goes into great detail about the Mosque. If you’re interested in learning more, go here!
After our visit to the Mosque, we had lunch at The UAE Heritage Village, enjoyed reading nationalistic poems about Sheikh Zayed, and saw how people lived in the UAE before there were cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi towering over the desert and the wood and grass houses. After we enjoyed the view, we parted ways with Anna (sadly!) and headed back to Ras al-Khaimah. (Thankfully, there were no speed bump accidents involved on the way back!)
