Arriving at 5:00am at Zayed International Airport (AUH) the temperature was closing at 30C. I was coming from a warm spring (early 20C temps) and I was stepping off the plane into some serious heat and humidity. But an avid traveller doesn't let that stop him from exploring.
When you have a short flight stopover of 8hrs then it is worth leaving the airport to have a look around. UAE accommodates this very easily with free visas*.
*If you are Australian, the tourist visa for the 8hrs is free. They'll stamp your passport and off you go.
The easiest and cheapest option for getting to the city centre is by bus. AED10.00 covers two main trips. I ended up using Uber to get back to the airport instead of the bus. I will talk more about that later.
The humidity is vicious. All my clothing clung onto the body. It was around 5:45am and it was a sign that the weather would get much hotter.
The bus was clean and air-conditioned... fantastic. It was not over crowded (as it was early in the morning). It took me all the way to Al Zahiyah.
The journey into the city centre was eye-opening. Abu Dhabi is a very flat city without any real hills or mountains. All the buildings are of modern construction with only the mosques and palace of real heritage.
From the city centre it was much cheaper to catch the bus followed by an Uber to Qasr Al Watan.
The problem, which I knew beforehand, was that Qasr Al Watan did not open until 11:00am. I was hoping that there was a way to walk around the back or side of the buildings to take some external pictures, even from the beach. Sadly this is not possible as it is inaccessible.
I resorted to only taking a few external pictures and walked all the way around the Emirates Palace and to the Rixos Marina Abu Dhabi. The Uber driver had advised me to walk around there for some better pictures. Once I finished at around 8:20am the weather was seriously heating up. Probably hitting 34C.
I took the second Uber to Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. I had booked my free ticket to visit (you need a ticket to visit) around 1mth beforehand. As soon as it was possible to book on the website, I booked immediately so as to not miss my opportunity.
This was an amazing mosque! Check out the photos for yourself. There was a lot of glare on the marble so I had to exposure compensate downwards, otherwise it would have been a white-out.
I took a leisurely 1:15hrs to see everything. Once you reach the outside the heat was on. It would have been a solid 36C. I had planned to walk to the bus stop to catch the A10 bus back to the airport, but Google maps was playing up. The mosque had fencing boundaries that made it difficult to get to a pedestrian overpass. My alternative was to get around the multi highway intersection. I ended up trying to follow Google maps but gave up. I couldn't be stuffed walking in the heat so decided to take the third Uber back to the airport. I was drenched with sweat. Nice way to be for my next flight to Baku, Azerbaijan.
Lucky the Zayed International Airport is very clean and has nice facilities to allow one to freshen up.
On the flight to Baku, you fly over Palm of Jumeirah of Dubai. I had sadly stashed my mobile and camera in the overhead storage and missed my chance to get the pictures. If there are no pictures then does that mean I didn't see it?
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