The highlight of our day tour in Abu Dhabi, and probably even for our entire trip, was visiting Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. This is the third largest mosque in the world and it is open for visits from non-Muslims as long as we followed and respected the posted rules…
The main rule is that Lisa must enter at a separate entrance and her head must be covered
The Palm Jumeirah is the world’s largest man-made island — shaped to look like a palm tree. The island is accessed by a monorail with two stations — one right at the base of the ‘tree’ and other other at the top of the tree. In this case, the top is the Atlantis the Palm Hotel, a fancy hotel with its own waterpark. While we didn’t go into the waterpark, we still managed to get a few photos and we walked around the hotel where we were permitted…
View from the monorail
Atlantis beach
Ceiling inside the hotel
Floor detail
Waterpark area
Construction going on all over the island... mainly big office buildings, hotels and condos
We tried to piece together our own independent tour to Abu Dhabi using the local busses, but it was complicated and in the end it was a better bet to just pay for a day trip with a bus tour company that we just booked at the hotel’s lobby. The best part is that we were able to take our luggage and bags with kids and get dropped off at our new hotel.
Our first stop was at the Grand Mosque, but I’ll post those photos as a separate post. Tour highlights…
Grand Mosque
Our tour van... There was only one other couple on the tour with us. This stop was to a fancy museum fine arts retailer
Gate entrance to the Emirates Palace
Tall buildings made famous in the movie Fast and the Furious
Heritage Village
A stop for dates..
We bought a bag of chocolate covered almond dates
Final stop at Ferrari World. We didn't pay the $100 admission to go in, but I sure would have loved to try that roller-coaster
When in Dubai, one must Desert Safari…
Just like in Hawaii, a favorite activity on the must-do list for any visitor is to take in a luau. Yeah sure, it is a touristy kind of show, but people enjoy it and the local outfits offering this activity have been successful at marketing this and creating the demand that there are shows pretty much every night all throughout the year. The Dubai Desert Safari therefore is along the same vein — a touristy show that is pretty well received and very popular to the point that it is actually pretty inexpensive for what you pay and what you get. Here is a quick run down of our Desert Safari Tour…
The Desert Safari tour is offered by a lot of companies. There are probably thirty or more that offer this tour, but in reading some TripAdvisor reviews it is sometimes hard to figure out those that are brokers vs those that actually conduct the tours. Since there are so many companies competing for the tourists, in turn there are lot of discounted tickets and deals to be had. Normal prices per person range from $50 – $100, but with Groupons and other deals available, the cost can come to between $25 – $50 for a normal tour. However, you get what you pay for — the reviews I read for the lower cost tours were not very favorable, so the sweet spot seems to be tours that regularly cost around $75 – $100. With that in mind, we were able to find a tour in our Entertainer app that offered a two-for-one discount.
The name of the company is Arabian Expedition and I booked the tour the day before. The TripAdvisor reviews were favorable and their charge was 300AED — around $85 per person. They told us to be ready in our hotel lobby around 2:30pm, and sure enough we were promptly met by our tour guide at 2:30pm. Our ride was a Toyota Land Cruiser with seating for six. We were the first pick up; the second pick up was just down the street and it was a family of four from Iran…
Timeline:
2:45pm left the second hotel and headed for the desert.
3:50pm arrival at the Quad Park
4:40pm back into the Land Cruisers for Dune Bashing — driving up and down the dunes with a few stops for photos
6:10pm arrival into the desert camp
6:35pm show performances begin
7:00pm dinner buffet is served
8:00pm Belly dancing performance
8:20pm Safari tour over, time to pack out
8:30pm left the camp and headed back towards the city
9:30pm back at the hotel
As you can see, it is only about an hour drive to get to the sand dunes and the entire affair takes around seven hours. We had a great time and I really enjoyed the dune bashing, though all the motion and ups and downs got to Lisa at the end of our tour before the camp. Fortunately she survived and was fine for our desert camp experience — over thirty other dune-bashing vehicles from other companies converged and there were probably about 120-150 guests there. Later on as we drove back, I counted at least four other camps in the surrounding areas that cater to the other tour companies, so it was pretty interesting to guess how the whole set up works.
At any rate, the desert camp experience had a number of activities that were available for guests, even though we didn’t ride the camel, didn’t partake in the hookah, didn’t try the sand boarding or take pictures with the falcon. But Lisa did get a Henna tattoo and of course we enjoyed the fire dancer, the traditional spinning dancer, and the belly dancing. The food wasn’t gourmet by any means, but it was tasty and there was plenty to go around — naan, tomatoes, cucumbers, tabbouleh, corn salad, hummus, white rice, dhal, bean/lentil stew, pasta ziti shells with tomato sauce, beef burger patty, lamb chops and BBQ chicken. Soda and water were also included, as was tea and coffee (though the latter were just packets that you added to hot water). Oh, and there was baklava for dessert. It cooled down a little bit in the evening, but my T-shirt and pants were good enough to keep me warm, plus it probably helped that there wasn’t much of a wind. Here are some photos of our afternoon and evening on the Desert Safari Tour…
First stop was this developed Quad park, where you could rent various Quads for an extra fee. You got increments of 20 minutes, but I forgot how much the charge was.
The equipment appeared well-taken care of and there were a lot of employees to provide a good ratio of staff to customers. While we were there, I counted at least ten people who paid the extra money to ride the quads.
These were the vehicles we used to ride the dunes
I was surprised at how smooth the ride was — felt like a roller coaster at times, but our driver was very safe and in control
With stops for photos and to visit some camels, the total Dune Bashing time was around 90 minutes — but this may have been too long for one passenger in another vehicle, who had to exit because she threw up and needed to just sit still at the side of the road for a few minutes (and to clean up, too)
It’s the desert. It’s hot. There are theme parks everywhere. And that includes water parks. So of course we had to do a water park! There are two in Dubai — the Atlantis AquaVenture and Wild Wadi. We had the Entertainer savings app and it includes a 2-for-1 admission for Wild Wadi, so we decided to go with that one.
Bad: it is quite a distance from our hotel.
Good: the public bus stops in front of our hotel and takes us all the way there.
Bad: it takes almost an hour and a half.
Good: we’re on vacation!
We woke up early, hit the breakfast buffet, and were on the bus by 8:30am. However, twenty minutes later we had barely even moved one mile because the traffic in the city is so congested. Apparently this slow down is built into the bus schedule, because we arrived to our bus stop around the time it was scheduled. It was just a short walk to the entrance and we arrived ten minutes before opening. Once the gates opened, we purchased our tickets ($75 per person, but the second free), stuffed our belongings into the overpriced locker ($13) and sought out the rides.
I started with the scariest one they offer — the Jumeirah Sceirah — but on my first attempt I was turned back because they do not allow eye glasses on the ride. So I hiked back down to Lisa (she refused to ride this one) at the ride’s exit and gave her my glasses. Then it was back up and up and up to the top. Hard to see with no glasses. But I could see that there was no line. Just me and the ride. No hesitation. Okay, a little hesitation. You see, the ride begins in a tube that you enter through a door. The door closes as you stand, arms crossed, and then there is a audible countdown … 3 … 2 … 1. Next thing you know a flap in the floor opens up and you fall straight down going 50 miles an hour, down down down and down to the bottom, a ten second ride of terror. But I survived. Lisa could have too, but she still refused to try it out.
The rest of our day consisted of trying out the different rides and just having a good time. Lines were minimal for the first hour and our longest wait was maybe ten minutes. By the time we decided to take a break at 1:00pm, the lines were just too much to take. We lounged, napped, dried out and finally left just after 2pm. Yeah, we were there for only four hours, but we rode most of the rides and were not interested in fighting the crowds to wait and ride again. We were good to go.
Overall, Wild Wadi is a great water park with some innovative rides. It is small and compact enough to not get lost, yet it still manages to pack in all the action. Plus the view of the Burj Al Arab, the world’s only seven-star hotel, makes for some awesome photos. Though $75 per person is a little steep, having the two-for-one coupon really helped absorb the cost of that overpriced locker. Well, many things are expensive in Dubai, so we can’t really complain. We had a lot of fun and that is the bottom line!
