We woke up the next morning, checked out of the apartment and hopped into the transfer taxi that our hotel had arranged. It was an hour and a half car ride down the highway to Abu Dhabi. Our rooms at the hotel in Abu Dhabi were not ready yet so we hung out in the lobby thinking we would check in, relax and then make our way to the Grand Mosque in the afternoon. As we logged onto the hotel wireless to check closing times we were shocked to see that the Mosque would close at 2 during Ramadan! It was already 12! We quickly scrambled to leave our bags with the concierge and jumped in a taxi to get to the Grand Mosque before it closed. I was a bit worried because this was high on our list of things to do in the Emirates and the thought of not getting a full experience sucked. Luckily we arrived at 12:30 which meant we had over an hour to explore. Before entering the mosque, gimpy was instructed by the security guards that she needed to cover up and so they gave her an all black burka to put on. I felt terrible for her because it was already super hot and having to add another layer that was all black and would attract heat really sucked. She was a trooper the whole afternoon though, while muscles and I were wilting in the heat, she powered through the whole time we were there, kudos to her!
We were also relieved to discover that a majority of the mosque was to remain open past two and that the only part of the mosque that would close was the temple/prayer portion, so we went there first. This room was very ornately decorated and was beautiful! It would be amazing to see it filled with people in prayer, but at the same time the vastness of the temple was something to behold. We all enjoyed this room and also tried to milk it as much as we could because it was one of the few areas that had air conditioning. We only left when Gimpy gave us the ok to do so.
The rest of the Grand Mosque, is exactly that: Grand. There have been few things in my travels that have given me a good reason to pause, and this Mosque is now one of them. It is an amazing structure that is almost completely white with elaborate gold trim and art on the pillars. In the Arabian sun it is difficult to really look at it directly because of how brightly it reflects the sun. At the same time though, you can’t help but soak in the color (or purity of white). The pictures don’t do it justice, but if its something that you think would interest you, I can’t recommend it enough, it is simply amazing.
We left after exploring as much of the mosque as we could (and as much heat as we could handle) and returned to the hotel where our rooms were ready and waiting for us. We hadn’t had lunch yet, and because of Ramadan we only one hotel cafe that was open, so we went there and grabbed a few snacks. We planned to go for dinner later in the evening, so this gave us a bit of free time to do whatever we wanted. Muscles found another Crossfit in Abu Dhabi and set out to find it and work out. Gimpy retired to her room to rest, and I caught up on blogging and vegged in front of the TV.
When Muscles returned, we set out to visit a few other sights, the Emirates Palace Hotel and the Presidential Palace. There is a lot of elaborateness in both these structures, they are beautiful and we enjoyed visiting them! We then made our way to a small Lebanese restaurant we found on Trip Advisor called Lebanese Mill. We wanted to get some local food and found the reviews for this place to be really good. It was close to our hotel and looked affordable. The food was delicious and the place certainly seemed like an authentic hole in the wall type place. We all really enjoyed it and have nothing but good things to say about Lebanese Mill.
Upon returning to our hotel, we once again had to pack (there’s a theme here….) as we would be starting the last leg of our trip the next day. Flying to Egypt.
We arrived in Egypt around noon and the first thing we noticed was just how extremely chaotic the Cairo Airport is. Both Gimpy and myself commented on how there could be tour guides waiting for passengers (with their name cards out) in the secure area before we even cleared customs. We were worried this was a glimpse of what is to come from our time here in Egypt. We also knew that we needed to pick up an entry visa for 25 USD, but we couldn’t find a place to do this, until we looked in the corner of the room where there was this small booth that had a small sign that said “Visas 25$”.
We were able to clear customs without issue after we obtained the visas and found our airport transfer shuttle without too much problem. If the chaos of the airport wasn’t telltale enough, as we were driving I was scared for my life. It was complete chaos on the roads, i can count at least a dozen times in the span of 15 minutes where I was sure we were going to hit another car or another human being. I was on the edge of my seat wondering what our driver would do next. The road rules (or lack thereof) in Cairo are amazing, and I’m not entirely confident I could do it, you need to be ultra aggressive. I’ve never been to India (on the list) but I have to imagine this is what it would be like to drive there, even places like Beijing seemed tame compared to this.
On the way to the hotel our guide asked if we’d be interested in learning about the history of papyrus and how it is made, it wouldn’t take too long and was on the way to our hotel. We all agreed and stopped at the Three Pyramids papyrus institute. The place is a single large room that looks like a gallery of painted papyrus art. At first it all seemed ok, because we were being walked through the process of how papyrus is made, however once the the demonstration is over, we were aggressively pursued to purchase pieces of papyrus art from them. It didn’t bother me too much because I had my eye on a piece already, but it didn’t really give a great first impression of Egypt because the feeling was we had been brought here simply to shop.
We eventually did leave the store (after making one or two purchases) and made our way to the hotel. We ended up resting within the hotel complex for the rest of the afternoon and evening. The area around the hotel didn’t seem to offer much and we weren’t entirely sure how “safe” it was in the area yet, so we decided to stay in, instead of venturing out. All in all it may not have been the best first impression, but we were still hopeful that the next few days would have some amazing things in store for us.
Galleries
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Wow, the mosque is incredible!
Agreed! One my favorite visits this entire trip!!!!