Wow, that was a long day! A lot of hours on the bus, but I saw a lot too!! My bus leaving Dubai was around 7am. Well, rather, I wanted to catch the 7am bus because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t late for the mosque tour in Abu Dhabi at 10am. I got there without any problems and got onto the bus with no issue and arrived in Abu Dhabi 2h later. I missed actually seeing the mosqu
e as I arrived into the city because I wasn’t at the window and the guy beside me had the blinds pulled! But, apparently, the mosque is built up higher (I want to say 8 meters) so that it is the first thing you see when you enter the island. Abu Dhabi is an island essentially and has 3 bridges to get into the city. When I got my cab and went to the mosque, however, it was just as stunning. The sky was bright blue, so the white marble and gold peaks really stood out against the sky. The mosque is named the “Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque” after the man who brought the separate pieces of the Emirates together to create the U.A.E. I didn’t realize that this country was formed so recently – 1971. He wanted a mosque that wasn’t just for worship. He wanted it to be a place where non-Islamic people could come to visit and learn about the culture and religion. There is even a library on-site! So, in many ways, it is a very unique mosque. The mosque is huge! It can hold 40 000 worshipers at one time!! It is the eighth largest in the
world! The building itself has 80 domes inspired from Indian architecture. Over 1000 pillars that are decorated with semi-precious stone inlays, and 24 carat tips that are covered with Italian glass for protection. The walls inside the foyer are covered in flowers that were made from different colours of marble from all over the world. The carpet in the main hall is the largest hand-made carpet in the world. There were over 1200 women working on it for 2 years to finish it! The chandelier in the main hall is made up entirely of Swarovski crystals and is 15m high and weighs something like 5 tonnes. It was absolutely beautiful!! It had an entirely different feel than The Taj Mahal, but they look pretty similar! Very different reasons, however Sheikh Zayed is buried on site here as well!! There is actually a live reading of the Koran in his tomb 24/7! Craziness! To do this tour, all the women had to get dressed up in the jilbab/abaya – the black dress and black head scarf. It was really cool to wear those for an hour to see what it would be like. They are not as hot as I thought they would be. Apparently they chose black because it was the color that could be the lightest weight without being see-through. After the mosque I went to visit the Palace hotel. It is a ‘seven star’ hotel, but the highest the scale goes is 5 stars! It was very beautiful and looked pretty much like a palace. There wasn’t much that you could actually get access to because there were bellboys everywhere, but it was neat to get an idea, in any case! I walked over to the beach from here
and managed to find a Baskin Robins as well! Talk about perfect: Eating ice cream for lunch on the beach! I was a happy girl!! There weren’t many people at the beach because it wasn’t the weekend or anything today, but there were a definite lack of females. I found one other Caucasian couple and put my stuff close-ish to theirs! Kind of a weird experience, but the beautiful sand and water definitely made up for it. It was kind of a gong-show getting home and I ended up being later than I wanted to be because Megan was going out with some friends for dinner and I was supposed to go with them. I was 7 minutes late, but Brandon told me she’d left ½ an hour earlier in any case…so I wouldn’t have been home on time even if I was “on time”! I hate that! Oh well! I went downstairs and got some really great hummus for dinner! Yeah!! I am totally wiped from all of my craziness today! I think tomorrow is calmer…which won’t be a bad thing! Later -Allison
e as I arrived into the city because I wasn’t at the window and the guy beside me had the blinds pulled! But, apparently, the mosque is built up higher (I want to say 8 meters) so that it is the first thing you see when you enter the island. Abu Dhabi is an island essentially and has 3 bridges to get into the city. When I got my cab and went to the mosque, however, it was just as stunning. The sky was bright blue, so the white marble and gold peaks really stood out against the sky. The mosque is named the “Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque” after the man who brought the separate pieces of the Emirates together to create the U.A.E. I didn’t realize that this country was formed so recently – 1971. He wanted a mosque that wasn’t just for worship. He wanted it to be a place where non-Islamic people could come to visit and learn about the culture and religion. There is even a library on-site! So, in many ways, it is a very unique mosque. The mosque is huge! It can hold 40 000 worshipers at one time!! It is the eighth largest in the 
world! The building itself has 80 domes inspired from Indian architecture. Over 1000 pillars that are decorated with semi-precious stone inlays, and 24 carat tips that are covered with Italian glass for protection. The walls inside the foyer are covered in flowers that were made from different colours of marble from all over the world. The carpet in the main hall is the largest hand-made carpet in the world. There were over 1200 women working on it for 2 years to finish it! The chandelier in the main hall is made up entirely of Swarovski crystals and is 15m high and weighs something like 5 tonnes. It was absolutely beautiful!! It had an entirely different feel than The Taj Mahal, but they look pretty similar! Very different reasons, however Sheikh Zayed is buried on site here as well!! There is actually a live reading of the Koran in his tomb 24/7! Craziness! To do this tour, all the women had to get dressed up in the jilbab/abaya – the black dress and black head scarf. It was really cool to wear those for an hour to see what it would be like. They are not as hot as I thought they would be. Apparently they chose black because it was the color that could be the lightest weight without being see-through. After the mosque I went to visit the Palace hotel. It is a ‘seven star’ hotel, but the highest the scale goes is 5 stars! It was very beautiful and looked pretty much like a palace. There wasn’t much that you could actually get access to because there were bellboys everywhere, but it was neat to get an idea, in any case! I walked over to the beach from here 
and managed to find a Baskin Robins as well! Talk about perfect: Eating ice cream for lunch on the beach! I was a happy girl!! There weren’t many people at the beach because it wasn’t the weekend or anything today, but there were a definite lack of females. I found one other Caucasian couple and put my stuff close-ish to theirs! Kind of a weird experience, but the beautiful sand and water definitely made up for it. It was kind of a gong-show getting home and I ended up being later than I wanted to be because Megan was going out with some friends for dinner and I was supposed to go with them. I was 7 minutes late, but Brandon told me she’d left ½ an hour earlier in any case…so I wouldn’t have been home on time even if I was “on time”! I hate that! Oh well! I went downstairs and got some really great hummus for dinner! Yeah!! I am totally wiped from all of my craziness today! I think tomorrow is calmer…which won’t be a bad thing! Later -Allison
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