As most of you know I was in Abu Dhabi last week. It was my first trip to the Middle East and very interesting. I know a lot of people confuse it with Dubai, which is also in the United Arab Emirates, but they are very different. Here is a very good article my wife found that talks about the differences

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...2357/index.htm

I never made it to Dubai which is about a 2 hour drive from Abu Dhabi.

On to the pictures.

If you ever go to Terminal 4 at JFK airport in NY you will see this mobile by Alexander Calder. This has been one of my favorite pieces of art since I took an Art History class at PC.


My plane landed about 8:00 am on Saturday, so I spent most of the first day walking along the Corniche, which is a walkway along the waterfront, where I got a pretty good sunburn on the top of my head. It was about 101-105 degrees when I was there, the sun is HOT just like here so you're always looking for shade. Abu Dhabi the city is on a small island so the humidity is about 90%.













































Here is a picture of my hotel.


Scisko, these are for you. Construction pics The second one was taken looking out the window of my hotel room. They started about 5 am every day. This is probably the first international trip I've taken that I did not oversleep one time.




Miscellaneous pics I took during the week.








Here is an interesting billboard I saw. Never actually saw the car, but I did see quite a few Toyota xA's, just never had my camera handy.


This is flat Mikey in the Abu Dhabi airport as I was waiting for the plane to take me home. That roof was pretty wild, but it's a small, old airport crammed full of people.



This has nothing to do with my trip, but Just1n emailed me this pic he took and I thought it was really cool. Thank you!


Thanks for looking everyone, hope you enjoyed the pics.

 

Beautiful City!

 

awsome picsc!! and pic #12 is that a commercial building or like condo's?? kewl kewl building none the less!

 

It is, but it really will be soon. I took pics of the better parts. It's a lot like the bigger cities in Asia, there are a lot of really beautiful views, but there is also a lot of rundown buildings. Right now they are in the process of tearing down old buildings and replacing them so there is a lot of construction. In most other areas the buildings they are tearing down would stay for another 20 or 50 years.

 

thank you.

I don't know what it is, but it was probably the most famous building in Abu Dhabi until they built the Emirates Palace hotel. There is also a HUGE mosque under construction just outside of town.

 

Great shots. Rich in culture. That picture I took looks all jacked up. I wonder what happened.

thanks for sharing

 

I guess it went funny when I resized it in Microsoft Photo Editor. How does it look now?

 

Great Pics Brent. Thanks for sharing them

 

AWESOME! Glad to see even across the world CAT runs the construction sites! Those cranes are LEGIT! I hear some of the guys over there making scale are making more than some places here! I love the Cameljockey shots! THAT WAS HILARIOUS! and the ghetto xwannab's LOL (MARKS PLATE!)


Glad you made it back okay.....

 

the camel jockey pics were on the wall of a pedestrian walkway under the main highway along the Corniche.

yeah, our agent over there told me on my second day that there are typically 2 types of people in that area with long beards; Muslim extremists and Jews. I didn't shave, but I had a taxi driver one day tell me "we should be Taliban". He was from Pakistan and had a pretty good beard going himself.

 

In case anyone was wondering, Flat Mikey was a school project for our son Michael. They had to make a "Flat" person (based on a book called Flat Stanley, about a kid who gets flattened by a bulletin board and mails himself around the world) and send it someplace, then do a report on the place. Michael got to wait and do his on Abu Dhabi since dad was going there. As soon as Brent got home, he had to do homework with Michael.

Abu Dhabi is going to be a "conservative" Dubai when it's all done; they are getting a Louvre museum, and some other really big-name stuff in the next few years. But they don't want to lose their conservative values, the way Dubai has.

 

Nice pics and the city looks great!

One thing is a little ookie though. Notice the lack of people. There are only a couple here and there...very odd.

 

nice pics you took!


105 degrees plus 90% humidity is a

 

glad you made it back safe.
and great pics!

 

Nice pics, Brent! Looks like some good scenery.

 

Nice pics Brent -- Looks like an amazing city. Thanks for sharing your trip with us.

 

Wow, very beautiful place! Thanks Brent for sharing your trip with us and glad you made it back safely!

 

Great pics!

 

Very cool pics

 

Wow, reminds me of Dubai . You gotta go back when they finish up the World Islands Project.