And no, this is not a paid post even though I’ve written the title as such. It’s just that, we signed up for a day trip in Abu Dhabi on Tripadvisor, guided by OceanAir Travels, and we had a fantastic experience, both because of the guide and the landmarks themselves, that we were blown away when we went there. Even when I posted these places on my Instagram story, a lot of my friends were also impressed and asked where these places were. Here’s the Tripadvisor that we joined – Dubai to Abu Dhabi Grand Mosque & Qasr Al Watan Palace. I liked this tour because rather than skimping over many different mediocre places like the Yas Island, this tour concentrates in visiting the Grand Mosque, the Presidential Palace, and the Etihad Towers for the observation deck, giving you ample amount of time to visit each of them.
Just a few quick pointers – the tour bus will probably pick you up at around 8 to 8:30am, so be ready at the lobby before then! Water bottles will be provided. Men will need to wear clothing that covers their shoulders, tummies, and pants longer than their knees. With ladies, the guide will provide a black abaya and a black scarf that you’ll have to return after the mosque visit. Women will ideally have to cover their ankles and also their entire arm. You must also hide any tattoos that are present in the body. And the tour will end roughly at around 4-4:30pm, but since it’s about a 1 hour and 15/30 minutes ride one way from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, you’ll be back to your hotel probably latest by 6pm.
I think a day trip to Abu Dhabi is so underrated at the moment, so you definitely should book a trip to visit their palaces and mosques before it starts getting too popular.
On The Way
On the way to Abu Dhabi. We were “lucky” because we were the last ones to be picked up on the tour bus, meaning we got to wake up later. The time sent to us was to be at the lobby between 8:30am – 8:45am. I expected the bus to come at 8:45am or a bit later, but the bus actually arrived at 8:30am.
Along the way, our tour guide gave us some interesting information about United Arabs Emirates (UAE). For example, he mentioned that there will be a train in operation by Jan. 2024 that will go from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in just 35 minutes! Even our bus ride was twice as long. You will also see that Dubai is much more international and touristy than Abu Dhabi, which was purposely built this way, where Dubai was the more touristy city.
A bit of history – so UAE pretty much gets its wealth from the oil discovery in 1958. As of 1971, there still was pretty much nothing in the country, and people were just settling at random spots in the desert. By 1979, there was already a skyscraper being built. Before the discovery of oil and getting rich, there was no Qatar, no UAE, families just lived near palm trees and near the sea. Now, there are even over 200 artificial islands in Abu Dhabi; whereas for natural islands there are only 2-3.
Our tour guide asked us which city is more important to UAE – Abu Dhabi, or Dubai? And the answer to that, as you might have guessed, was Abu Dhabi, because Abu Dhabi has a lot more oil than Dubai; whereas Dubai produces about 60,000 litres of oil per day, Abu Dhabi produces 35 million litres of oil per day! And because of this, Aramco the oil producer, is one of the most important companies in UAE, as evident by their luxurious and unconventional looking buildings. Anything that deals with oil is Aramco.
I’ll share more tidbits of info that the tour guide shared with us later in the post, but let’s get to the mosque first.
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque (website)
I am not sure if you can just walk in, so I highly recommend either to join a tour like us or pre-book to visit ahead of time on their website. The mosque was completed in December 2007, and is able to fit a capacity of 50,000 people in there. While on weekdays you won’t see people praying, on Friday you will definitely see a lot of people praying. The entire area of the mosque is about 30 acres.
The pioneer of this project, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who was the late president of UAE, wanted to establish a structure that would unite the cultural diversity of the Islamic world with the historical and modern values of architecture and art, and thus this SZGM was born. Unfortunately, he passed away at 2004, so he was not able to see his creation come to life.
Parking lot
We actually had to go through a shopping mall to get to the visitor center. Plus some women needed to wear the abaya so they used the mall’s bathrooms to change.
Cute lego. Speaking of which, the tour guide mentioned that the men who wear white headscarves on their heads are from UAE, whereas the men who wear red headscarves were from Saudi Arabia. I forgot the history but something about some family decided to start their own country so Saudi Arabia did not exist until that family decided to create their own country. Also, UAE did not have its own currency until 1973. Before that, it was mainly using Qatar currency and Bahrain currency. They decided to have their own currency to bring stability and uniformity to the region’s monetary system.
A few shops to see. A small food court. This mall basically had all the western brands – we even ate at Burger King.
Black Stone of Kaaba. Took a pic thought it was pretty cool
Tim Hortons Abu Dhabi. This Tim Hortons is so much more cultured and tidy than the ones you get in Canada lolz.
Finally arrived at the mosque! Did you know the cost of this mosque was USD 545 million!?!
Even in late September, the weather can still be very very hot, so women who wear the black abaya would definitely feel the heat. Most of the mosque visit was outdoors.
When you take photos in the mosque, you cannot do any hand signs, not even ✌️, and men and women cannot have any physical contact. It doesn’t matter if you two are married, or it’s your mother or your daughter, it is just forbidden, and the security guards will be watching you.
Underneath this chandelier, this carpet is supposedly one of the largest single carpet in the world. Middle Eastern countries like to compete with one another and also with other countries, so they try to complete to have the biggest or largest of things.
Everything you see here is still just one carpet
On the way to Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers
The leaning tower of Abu Dhabi. Our tour guide said the slant of this tower is actually “slantier” than the famous one in Pisa, Italy
He mentioned that Dubai is not only about tourism, but also about real estate as well. With Dubai, you can feel that the city is more busy, more international, and more happening. With Abu Dhabi, you can feel that the city is more conservative, and the streets are more quiet. Since there is no convenient public transportation, everyone drives a car in Abu Dhabi. Also, there are many cameras in Abu Dhabi – they call their camera system Falcon Eye.
This is the VIP entrance for the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental. This is when politicians, diplomats, or very important people come to visit Abu Dhabi and stay at this hotel, only they can go through this entrance. Even if you’re staying at this hotel and you’re not considered VIP, you will have to take another, less glamorous entrance.
A sneak peak at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental. Anyone can stay here. Book your stay at (website)
Grand Hyatt Abu Dhabi
Bab Al Qasr Hotel on the right
Observation Deck at 300, Etihad Towers (visitabudhabi.ae)
Located in Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers, we had a quick visit to overlook the entire Abu Dhabi city from the 74th floor of the hotel. From here, I recognized a couple of notable places, including the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, and our next stop, which was Qasr Al Watan.
Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, majestic even from above. Apparently, the government gave it an UNLIMITED (yes unlimited!) budget to construct this palace, and it ended up costing USD 3 billion for this.
Even the observation deck from within looked fancy
Qasr Al Watan (website)
And finally, we stopped by what I consider an incredibly underrated, less popular, but super well worth going, and my favorite stop of the tour, the Qasr Al Watan palace!
This palace, unlike other palaces, has never had anyone living in there before. This presidential palace was actually completed in 2017, and probably due to how new it is, it hasn’t been hyped up yet. In fact, it was only opened to the public starting in 2019. Other than that, the palace is mainly used for hosting foreign leaders of states, and for meetings of the country’s supreme council and federal cabinet. Not surprised at all, given how anyone who comes here will be in awe of the architecture of this place.
You’ll probably see me posting photos of the same areas at different angles since even looking at the photos, I can’t filter out which ones to remove. By the way, it’s probably best that you pre-book tickets to visit here if you plan on going without a tour.
Since it’s still an ongoing used palace, you will have to go through security checks
Apparently they even have a place for dining as well, which we didn’t go since we were on a tour, didn’t know about, and didn’t have time.
You have to line up a bit to take a photo here. Also, you will need a friend to help you take photos for you because the photographer there will only use his camera to take photos; he won’t help you use your smartphone to take photos for you.
I’m putting a lot of these photos because I love the designs and patterns, so also for my own reference as well when I read my own blog
They have different “miniature” rooms as well, this one featuring the Library
Love these floral patterns
They also have another room showcasing all the gifts they have received from foreign officials, and they are incredibly gorgeous, like all of them
So many lavish gifts!
When we finished, it was around 4pm ish, and we took the tour bus back home and arrived back to our hotel by around 5:30pm. If you’re in Abu Dhabi for a longer time, you can also check out Yas Island, with its Ferrari World and Warner Bros World and Sea World (apparently the largest in Middle East since its opening).
A couple other things I learned about UAE:
- Apparently it’s not a kingdom, but also doesn’t have elections, UAE is just states of the emirates and they choose whether the brother or son is next to be in line
- Even though UAE has 10 million people, only 2 million are legit citizens, the other 8 million are non-local, usually coming from places like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Qatar etc. to come and work
- It is almost impossible to have citizenship. Even if you are born here by foreign parents or married to someone with UAE citizenship, you cannot get citizenship yourself. My tour guide from Egypt said this and said its impossible for him to get citizen, and even a young taxi driver I knew from Dubai also said that Dubai is good for short term but not long term because it’s impossible to get citizenship there so cannot reap the benefits if stay there for a long time. That being said, you can get a visa that you’ll have to renew every 2-3 years
- The reason why it’s hard to get citizenship is because it gives massive benefits to its citizens, including free hospital and free public schools and many other free benefits as well
- It used to be that if you were to invest a project in UAE, you will need to find a local citizen to partner with, and that partner had to be the one with at least 51% of the shares of the company. Now they recently abolished that rule so that you can own 100% of the company, but you are generally required to hire a certain number of local citizens, known as Emiratis, based on specific regulations and guidelines set by the UAE government.
- If you want to have sort of a “citizenship”, you can pay for a gold visa which can give you rights similar to a citizen for 10 years and more, but the cost of investment will be 2 million Dirham (dubai currency) and upwards of that
And that’s it! I definitely was impressed by a lot of the architecture and interior design of these magnificent places, and I did learn a lot more about UAE’s history and how it became where it is today!
