Our stop over..

It was so great to see everyone over the last two weeks! Sorry that we only got to catch up with Glenn, Dee, Jules and Cheryl online - hopefully we'll see you all in person next time!

Our flight to Abu Dhabi was long and uneventful - 13 hours flying time gave me a chance to watch four movies and a couple of tv shows. :-) Thanks to a pre-booked car, we got to our four-star (!) hotel just before midnight. We didn't have to get our bags out of the car or drag them up to our room - one of the staff brought them up on a trolley. It felt so posh!

Our room was great - giant comfy bed, good view over the city, all the mod cons (including a tablet-thing that controls the lights, air-con and things with unidentifiable icons). I definitely made the most of our fancy hotel - don't know when we'll stay somewhere like that again!

We had a fairly relaxed day on Saturday - the hotel is attached to a mall, so we went shopping! It was a little bit of a struggle to fit the bargains into our cases - but we got there in the end. :-) The shops in the mall seem to be mostly American & British with a smattering of Emirati. We even managed to find a stall that makes those spiral potatoes! We may not have found them at the Scot's Day Out in Bendigo but at least we had them once on the holiday. Yum!

Sunday we went on a tour, Hala's Story of Abu Dhabi - a half-day tour to show us the main sights. We went to a date market (yum), the Heritage Village (with a museum and some handcraft stalls), and Saadiyaat (a strange island-development). The highlight of the day was the Sheikh Zayed Mosque - it's amazing! It's the largest Mosque in UAE and is the only one in Abu Dhabi (and possibly UAE) that allows non-Muslims inside. There's a fairly strict dress-code - I had to wear an abaya and headscarf (Bruce could wear regular clothes) and no shoes are allowed inside, but it's worth it to see the largest chandelier in a Mosque (12 tonnes of Murano glass and Swarovski crystals!) and the biggest hand made carpet in the world!

Monday we headed to Yas island for a boat ride. We ended up being the only passengers, so we got a private trip! Yay! The captain didn't really give us a 'tour' but he did point out local wildlife - we saw storks, herons and gazelles. After our 90 minute trip, we headed to the local Mall and had a lovely day of cake - caramel cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory (just like on Big Bang Theory) and then found a Patisserie des Reves in a department store (we went to the original Patisserie in Paris with Mum in 2012!). 

We had a car booked to take us back to the airport on Tuesday - they took us to the first class check-in and we were through security within 5 minutes! That would have been great if there were any decent shops to look at.. instead we just used the free wifi to catch up on email. :-)

If you want to see the rest of the photos from our trip, they're in this album.

We were both back at work on Wednesday - straight back into it! I'm pretty tired this weekend but hopefully everything will be back to normal by next weekend. :-)

Updates from you lot?