Trekkin

Day 27 – Tuesday 9 January 2018

This morning we woke up to rain, yes it does rain here but before we got too excited it stopped & the sun was rising.  The sun rises about 7 am so we see beautiful sun rises & sun sets with gorgeous views from the 9^th floor.  Only a brief cuddle & sleep-in with Austin this morning before out at 7am & the off to school process.  Another leisurely day, a bit more catching up with business stuff & on-line education.  We had a swim & spa this afternoon before the boys got home from school, this is a great facility the apartment complex has, it’s just like a resort.  There are Lifeguards on duty from 6am (so we have been told we don’t get up at that hour.) until 9pm at both the lap pool & the main pool.  There are cleaners wiping railings, marble containers the gardens are contained in, today  the rain water is sucked up from the tennis court & path ways, the pool & everything else is always pristine clean.

At 5pm there is a parent-teacher meeting at the boy’s school, we pass an accident at some traffic lights nearby, an ambulance is there, a Mercedes G63 AMG on its side.

The boys showed us around the outside of the school pointing out where their classes, gym, swimming pool & play areas are.  The playground has wall to wall artificial grass & sail cloth for shade.  Monica & Charles come out smiling – nice praise from the teachers.  The Canadian International School is big, but they have kinder to year 10 at the same school, this works out well for Monica’s because the boys can come home in the same taxi.

The accident is still there on the way back so we take a long detour over to Yas Mall for dinner.  We still get lost in the Yas Mall, it is so large.  Tonight we came across a complete new wing that we had not seen before.  It makes any mall we have seen in Australia pale into shabby insignificance, they really do know how to build beautiful big malls with lots of open space, waterfalls & in some shops in the mall they actually have rock climbing, huge slides etc. just to entertain the kids to relieve their boredom.

Abu Dhabi & Dubai has so very many entertainment parks & they seem to strive to get whatever they can bigger & better than anywhere else.  They are in the process of building a Warner Bros. theme park & it will have the biggest roller coaster ride anywhere.

There are so many restaurants to choose from in this place but dinner tonight is at the Brazil Steakhouse in Yas Mall, this is a great dining experience, though a bit weird to start, we have to eat the salad first.  The waiters are dressed as Brazilian Gauchos (cowboys) & bring the BBQ meat out on large metal skewers then slice off the amount you want.  They keep on bringing different types of meat around & as many times as you want until you are full.  The meat is absolutely delicious, so tender & flavoursome, it melts in your mouth.  I eat until I am full, then manage to squeeze one more tasty morsel.  Very enjoyable.  After dinner we wonder around this wing of the mall & I (Tereza) just can’t help myself, taking photos of all the beautiful ceilings & waterfalls.  Another great day.

Day 26 – Monday 8 January 2018

Another school day, another early start, the boys are both out of bed & having breakfast by 7am, it is all busy with getting dressed & organised for school & Charles has them at school by 7.45am for lessons starting at 8am.  For us it was a little more leisurely, watched a movie, then Tereza was busy in the kitchen all morning making the boys their favourite Hungarian layered chocolate slice & I was catching up on some banking, bills, emails & news.  A little bit of grocery shopping in the afternoon, there was a very strong cool wind blowing and the temperature was about 20C so we sooked out of going for a swim.  Tereza had a nana nap & I did a little bit of on-line education stuff until the boys got home from school, then it was boys time & surprise afternoon tea treat then school homework.  Monica made us a very nice quiche for dinner, a quite chat, planning for another trip to Dubai & booking motel & tickets for some things we have not done or seen yet.  Another very pleasant day.

Day 25 – Sunday 7 January 2018

The boys go back to school & Charles back to work today so a 7am start & early breakfast.  Later after our breakfast Tereza & I go for a long walk around Al Bandar & along the canals, the multi-story apartment blocks have a large collection of shops underneath, mainly cafes & other food shops.  In front is a large private sandy beach, with a collection of various canoes & other like watercraft stored at either end.  There is a jungle of high rise buildings & they are still building more.  We are wondering if they are expecting an influx of people or what are the many high rise apartments for.  The building Monica’s live in has many empty apartments.  Here the expats don’t live in compounds, in UAE the locals live with people from anywhere & everywhere.  We admire the large water body with the Yas Island developments across the other side & begin our leisurely stroll back to the apartment for lunch.  Afterwards we head down to the pool for a relaxing swim then even more relaxing in the hot spa with soothing massage jets, then the pool again.  The boys come home from school & surprise us, still in the pool.  Austin quickly joins us & we spend more time swimming & mucking around in the pool.

At 6pm we head to the Yas Marina Formula One race track & pick up a free bicycle for a free ride around the track, all 5.55kms of it.  It is amazing the number of people that are out here, mostly cycling but some jogging.  There is all levels of skill, a lot of them riding their own expensive cycles fast, a lot like us just poking around & enjoying the atmosphere.  There are some ambulances placed at strategic locations around the track, just in case.  It is amazing how long the main straight is, mostly downhill.  Jackson wins the race to the finish line.  The uphill part of the track is a little bit taxing.  Afterwards we headed to the Yas Mall for dinner & groceries.  Another very pleasant day.

Day 24 – Saturday 6 January 2018

This morning Austin slept in & we had to wake him at 8am, before a late breakfast & departure from Nizwa around 10am heading back to Abu Dhabi.  Again the scenery is stunning, huge rocky mountains dominating the skyline with the occasional group of new looking houses randomly planted on the rocky plain.  We pass by more herds of goats, see the occasional herd of camels, lots of small food crops, plantations of date palms & travel along at 120km/hr on superb, flat, mainly straight roads with streetlights down the middle for a couple of hours until the streetlights disappeared about 50km out of Al Ain.  The land changed to a flat rocky/sandy plain as far as the eye can see & there are larger trees & more scattered bushes appearing, with the occasional smattering of small sand dunes.  As we neared Al Ain the massive shape of Jebel Hafeet loomed out of the haze & loomed larger & larger as we got closer to the Oman/UAE border.  Another old Oman fort stood in the shelter of Jebel Hafeet next to the border.  It took us about an hour to get through both sets of border crossings then another 5 minutes we were in the outer suburbs of Al Ain.

After stopping for fuel on the road again (where we saw for the first time ever a drive through Burger King, so we had to buy some chips even though we were not really hungry) & the road system has improved again, with the drawback of speeding Emirates drivers.  The maximum speed limit is now 140km/hr & there are cars speeding past us going a lot, lot faster than that.  The road spreads out to 3 lanes dual carriageway & the sand hills on either side are large & reddish tinge.  Abu Dhabi is only another hour & a half away & the road keeps improving & getting wider as we approach Abu Dhabi.  It is good to arrive back at the apartment, Charles has been driving around 5 hours & has done another fabulous job of getting us all to Oman & back safely.  On top of all that he also whips up a great dinner for us tonight as well.  Another fabulous day.

The boys have been so good, Austin did ask a few times about how many more hours before we get home.  He also asked us some really good questions that needed a lot of clever explaining & checking Google for answers.  I also helped myself to a couple of bananas & Danish pastries from breakfast so the boys would have some snacks.

Day 23 – Friday 5 January 2018

A late start this morning with breakfast by the pool again.  Monica isn’t feeling well, she could have picked up a stomach bug.

We got away around 10am on our journey to Nizwa, in the Omani mountains.  As soon as we left Muscat we were in the mountains & started to climb slowly away from the Gulf of Oman.  The road again is superb, streetlights down the middle of the dual carriageway.  The suburbs of Muscat stretch up into the mountains, it is amazing, there are so many new & nice looking houses.  The road follows a dry riverbed & again it is a superb piece of engineering.  The traffic is good with not too many speeding crazy drivers, we did pass one ute with a load full of goats in the back held down with a net.  Oman seems to have a lot more water available than the UAE, there are gardens, date palms & food crops scattered all along the roadside.  Every now & then we spot a lonely watchtower on a hilltop & the occasional herd of goats & camels by the side of the road.  We are continually impressed by the ruggedness of the landscape & the sparseness of vegetation, we even saw a goat up in a very prickly tree standing on a branch grazing the leaves off.  Yet there are lots of people living out here, in nice houses.  We reach our hotel in Nizwa after only an hour & a half of driving & check-in, drop our bags.  The Golden Tulip Hotel is amazingly beautiful with lovely gardens, swimming pool & inside marble floors, Omani decore & furniture in the reception/lobby area, stunning.  Our bedroom is western style & we are sharing room with Austin (lucky us, we will have an early morning wake up kiss).

We are on the road again, our destination this afternoon is Jebel Shams, the highest mountain in Oman & supposedly very scenic.  The drive is 2 hours according to Google so we head straight out. We drive out through the backstreets of Nizwa & further into the mountains.  The road is very good for the first hour, then we turn at Al Hamra & follow another dry wadi up into the mountains.  As we get higher there are more twists & turns, amazingly beautiful scenery with high mountains, rocky ravines & rock everywhere.  There are still lots of houses out here, even more amazing is how nice they are in that unique mainly sand colour & Arabic architecture, flat roof & those different shaped & sized windows & doors.  Out in the country they seem to build high solid walled fences around their houses & they have a reasonable distance between the neighbouring houses.  We wonder what the heck these people live from.  Then the dirt road begins, my goodness is this rough & windy & steep.  The scenery gets even more stunning & the really high mountains surround us as we climb further & further.  There are lots of other cars heading this way as well & when we finally get to the Jebel Shams viewpoint we discover that most of them are Indian tourists.

Jebel Shams viewpoint has an amazing view of the mountain, with a couple of large radar dome installations on top.  Monica & Jackson decided to walk further up & we follow over a rough rocky path, it was worth the climb, we see so much more.  The amazing thing is the huge ravine, an impossibly deep & very large canyon with steep cliffs to the rocky creek bed below.  The Wadi Ghul below us is 1,000 metres or more deep & is a truly impressive sight, but I am nervous getting near the edge, it is a very long way straight down.  There is a creek with water down below.  We are at 2,020 metres above sea level & it is around 17C temperature.  Jebel Shams itself is still 1,000 metres above us.  Our drive back down the mountain is just as rugged (but this time we are driving near the rock wall not at the edge of the road) but the different viewpoint looking the other way was just as interesting, truly beautiful.  We pass a few ancient ruins along the way & about half way back to Nizwa we take the turn to the city of Bahla.

Bahla is a large spread out city & has a very large fort at a high point in the city.  As we get close to the fort the old city walls can be seen clinging to the ridges leading away up into the hills.  The fort is shut, today is Friday, the holy day & lots of places are shut, so we take a walk around the outside perimeter of the fort.  Around the back of the fort we discover a clutch of derelict mud brick houses, abandoned & falling apart, we wonder how old they are.  At the front gate of Bahla Fort is a pair of old British cannons, one has a date of 1797 on the barrel.  The fort itself is impressive, very large & tall, an imposing structure made from unbaked mud, repaired & restored over the centuries due to the ravages of time & rain.  Historians say that the oldest parts of the fort were built around 500 B.C.  It is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site, the only fort in Oman listed.

Our trip back to Nizwa is uneventful.  We explore the hotel & grounds a bit more before we have dinner in the hotel restaurant, Monica is still not well, she hardly touched her food & left the table early, may be just as well that we are going back home (UAE) tomorrow.  We are all very tired especially Charles & looking forward to bed.

Charles did in excellent job driving us safely there & back over some fairly bad & very winding road.  Another great day.

Day 22 – Thursday 4 January 2018

An early wakeup, we had the curtains wide open last night so that we could enjoy the beautiful views from our bed.  We awoke at dawn, to a cloudy morning in paradise.  The wind had picked up, the tide had come in & our view looked totally different from our balcony this morning from yesterday.  We had breakfast outside near the pool, people were already swimming & doing some laps.

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque was our first visit.  The Grand Mosque is only a 10 minute drive from our hotel & first impressions are that it is truly grand, the gardens are absolutely beautiful & the mosque is huge, the minaret towers stand tall & the golden prayer hall dome is stunning, this is a very large uniquely beautiful mosque.  It used to have the world record of having the largest single carpet & largest chandelier until the Emirate’s people outdid them in Abu Dhabi.  We were overawed by Abu Dhabi’s Grand Mosque’s chandelier & dome but Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is even more beautiful.  The chandelier is a very impressive centrepiece of the main prayer hall, it is 14 metres tall & weighs 8.5 tonnes with 600,000 Swarovski crystals.  There are not enough superlatives to describe this mosque, it is truly stunning & the photos do not do it any justice at all, the architecture, design, geometric symmetry, patterns, tiles are all magnificent.  The mosque closes to visitors at 11am, we could have spent a lot more time marvelling at this beautiful building.

We drive next to the old original port district of Mutrah & stop firstly at the waterside Kalbuh Park & admire the old watchtowers sitting atop craggy hilltops, the giant monument of a large white incense burner also holds our attention.  We drive back towards the port & stop at Riyam Park & climb up to the old watchtower on the peninsular, this has a couple of old cannons on display inside the turret & offers great views over the harbour.  There is a large cruise ship in port, the Celebrity Constellation & as we drive further into the main port area there are tourists flooding off the ship everywhere, wandering over the roads & causing traffic problems.  We stop to have a look at the Bait Al Baranda Museum, it is small & in an old colonial style building, it is very dark inside & difficult to read the words on the displays.  The museum provides a history of Muscat from primitive times up until today, Muscat was an important trading port over many centuries.  The dimness of the interior of this museum is annoying instead of being a pleasurable experience.

Our next point of interest is the Sultan Qaboos Al Alam Palace, this is sited overlooking another small port & the entrance to the palace is very impressive.  The parking is almost impossible or getting too near to the palace from what we could see, it certainly is a beautiful place.  The whole area around the palace is surrounded by beautiful looking government & other buildings & the whole area is very neat & tidy with beautifully tended gardens throughout.  Muscat is a big beautiful interesting city, the short time we are spending here we really enjoyed it.

The boys had enough of sightseeing so we all decided to spend the rest of the afternoon lazing on the beach (Ron & Tereza) while Charles & Austin had a great time playing in the waves, Monica & Jackson walked at the edge of the water collecting shells etc.  Austin built a wonderful sand castle which after it was well documented by photographs he enjoyed jumping all over – as the tide would wash it away anyway.  We watched another beautiful sunset from the pool bar area where we had some drinks & light meal.  A great game of UNO finished our day off nicely – for some of us, Ron & Charles enjoyed yesterday the English pub – beer & combo food selection that today at 8 pm they went down for some more son-in-law & father-in-law bonding.  There is live music down by the pool which is very enjoyable to listen to through the open balcony door.  Another great day.

Day 21 – Wednesday 3 January 2018

Tereza had to wake me at 7.30am this morning, I was out to it, must have been all the zoo walking.  The view from our room at Al Ain is very nice out over the pool, however, time to keep moving, we had a very nice buffet breakfast at the hotel, then on the road again.  We are driving to Muscat in Oman today via Sohar on the coast.  The highway out of Al Ain towards Sohar is a very nice multi lane divided road with streetlights, the Oman border is very close to the road, a high wire fence with coils of barbed wire on top.  First we negotiate the UAE border post about 5km out of Al Ain, fairly straightforward & we pay an exit fee.  We go through 4 separate posts here, 1^st is customs, basically focussing on the car’s insurance & other papers & that we have permission from the rental company to take it over the border into Oman.  The next is immigration where they check & stamp our passports, then another check post where they take the document provided by the first checkpoint regarding the car papers.  They seem more interested in the car than us.  Last is a Police checkpoint, one policeman carrying a very serious machine gun, we think they were Omani Police checking our passports, we are now in Oman.  We then drive for another 10 or 15km through very arid land with distant hills shadowed in the haze to get to the Oman border post, here we all have to get out of the car & go into the Immigration Office to apply for an entry visa.  There is not too much of a crowd & it only takes about half an hour to fill in the forms & get our passports stamped then pay the Tourist Visa fee.  Once again they didn’t show very much interest in us.

The road to Sohar is magnificent, a really good road surface, dual divided carriageway with street lights all the way at 120km/hr speed limit.  There are no towns that slow us down, though there are some towns on the side of the highway, goodness knows what they live from, the mountainous country is so barren.  We pass an occasional herd of goats & once see a herd of camels feeding near the road, don’t know what they could be eating.  We pass the occasional old round watchtower on a hill & the odd old fort along the way to Sohar, as well as a few mining sites.  It is very mountainous all the way to Sohar & they have done a fabulous job of building such a great road through such a rough bit of country.  As we get to Sohar the number of buildings at the side of the road grows & then we are in suburbia.  Sohar is a large city on the coast of Muscat where we turn & then start on the highway to Muscat along the Oman coast.   Along the road we see many beautiful Mosques. The buildings are very much in the Arabian style – square flat roofed mostly ornately shaped or decorated windows of triangles, or the tops of them scalloped or a mixture of different shapes or sizes on the same building.  Mainly the buildings are sand colour with a few just about white.

The highway is still magnificent, still with streetlights down the middle all the way along.  As we travel we notice a road feature we have never seen before, a U-turn loop up & over the road, a very clever & safe idea.  We also notice that there is hardly any Mercedes cars on the road, in UAE they are very common, reflecting the disparity of wealth between the two countries.  The side of the road has lots of date palm & banana plantations.  Date palms are growing everywhere.  There are also lots of tended food crops & gardens, very different than what we have seen in the UAE.  We pass not one, but two Australian Jayco caravans, very strange to see, they are the first caravans we have ever seen since we left home.  We wonder what the people are doing with them, there are no caravan parks anywhere.  We take what we believe is a U-turn loop to get us to the other side of the road, but it ends up taking us straight into a shopping mall.  Great, we do need leg stretches, a toilet break & it is lunch time as well.  Outside the mall looks unpretentious, typical low Arabian architecture but inside it is very modern & beautiful with marble floors, very clean & modern shops & beautiful marble bathrooms.  We have lunch at Barka Mall, of all places, Hungry Jacks.  The food court is full of Western style take away shops.  After lunch we find our way back onto the highway, only about another hour of driving to Muscat.

As we approach Muscat the street lights get fancy & the gardens at the side of the road have beautiful flower beds & green lawns with the roundabouts having large elaborate sculptures with water features in them.  The Mosques get larger & more colourful with beautiful gardens surrounding them.  The traffic also gets heavier & we start seeing multi story buildings, but not too high as the Sultan of Oman has decreed that no high towers are to be built.  We pass the Muscat Airport & see the waters of the Gulf of Oman.  Our hotel is in Al Qurm, a suburb of Muscat & soon we are booked in & settled into our rooms, we have a nice balcony with a great view of the pool & along the beach stretching up the coast.  Thanks to Monica who researched the places we should visit & the beautiful hotels we should stay at.  We go down for a walk on the beach & do a little bit of exploring, the tide is out & the limestone has been undercut by the sea leaving interesting rock formations.  Afterwards we sit by the pool & have some drinks watching the sunset over the mountains, there is an old 1954 green Buick car parked next to the bar that adds some character.  We even squeezed in a couple of games of Uno.  Another great day.

We are very lucky to have Monica & Charles planning, organising & taking us to Jordan, Oman & showing us all the great places in Abu Dhabi & Dubai, but the best part is that we are together with them.

Day 20 – Tuesday 2 January 2018

An earlier start after our usual morning wake up kiss from Austin, we were out the door around 9am & we drive to the border city of El Ain today, around 150km away.  The divided highway is mostly 3 lanes, some 4 & some 5 lanes, in very good condition, it puts most Australian roads to shame.  As we drive out of Abu Dhabi we leave behind the jungle of high rise buildings of glass & cement for low lying desert suburbs either side of the road, not far behind them stretches desert dunes.  There are rows of irrigated trees either side of the highway & irrigated date palms down the middle, we come across men now & then cleaning the rubbish up or checking the irrigation systems.  As we get even further away from Abu Dhabi the desert sands come down to the highway on both sides & there are more sand dunes, there are fewer & fewer buildings.  The road signs keep referring to this area as farms.

Closer to El Ain the sand dunes start to get large & there are a few townships scattered along the highway & in the distance a large mountain range looms on the horizon.  Things start to get a bit greener as we get close to El Ain, there are beautiful flowers & green grass around the city, there are natural springs that provide water to the city & irrigate the food crops.  El Ain doesn’t seem to have big high rise buildings but the buildings all have sand colouring so they all seem to blend into the desert.  We drive through the outskirts of El Ain & head toward the large mountain range behind the city, it is called Jebel Hafeet & the road winds for a steep 11.7km up to the summit at 1,300 metres high.  Jebel Hafeet is almost devoid of vegetation & archaeologists have discovered 317 tombs dating back to 3,000B.C. so far in the limestone on the north & east faces of the mountain.  Amazingly there are some very large palatial houses on top of the mountain as well as a new looking Mercure Hotel, all with spell-binding views over the desert below or the city of El Ain which is quite a big city.  From the summit viewing area a lot of the land that we are looking at is the country of Oman.  On the way down we are hoping that the brakes on the car work well as there is lots of evidence of vehicles losing control & hitting the concrete barriers that skirt the road, there is even the remains of a truck part way down the mountainside.  Thankfully we make it down OK.  Once again it’s good that Charles drives.

We drive into the centre of El Ain & our hotel, the Rotana.  We check in & have lunch at one of the hotel restaurants.  Al Jahili Fort is about 500 metres from our hotel where we next stop to look, it was built in 1898 originally as a summer residence for the royal family of Sheik Zayed bin Khalifa.  It is one of the oldest historical buildings in the UAE & is made completely from mudbrick construction.  It was fascinating to walk completely around & explore the old fort, very thick mud walls & low doorways.  The well had water in the bottom of it, a long way down.  Even the steps up to the towers are mud brick & very crumbly in places, I can’t imagine how it holds up when it rains.  Apparently that is not too often out here.  The Al Jahili Fort’s other claim to fame is that appears on one of the UAE banknotes.  There was a very interesting photographic exhibition inside the fort of photographs of desert tribal life taken by a British explorer & photographer who befriended Sheikh Zayed, it was called the “London Exhibition”.  The fort also had a life as a military outpost for many years (I wonder how the mud steps withstood all the soldier’s boots going up & down on them) & was the main trading link between Oman & UAE.

Our next stop is the El Ain Zoo, a very large & modern zoo out in the desert.  We had a 4pm Safari Tour booked & we were taken around the open air exhibitions in a Toyota Landcruiser with a very large open roof & canopy so that we could stand up inside to see & take photos.  The Safari Park is 7 years old, man-made & has 18 different species of African animals, including zebra, giraffe, rhinoceros, wildebeest, lion plus a multitude of different types of antelope, some rare & endangered, one species even extinct in the wild.  They have a breeding program to try & save the species.  We fed some of the animals from the car with carrots, some of the giraffes & antelopes poked their heads inside the windows to get a feed, talk about getting up close & personal.  After around an hour of driving around we exited the safari park & started walking around the rest of the zoo before it got too dark, the zoo is open until 8pm.  The enclosures are mostly lit up after dark & adds another dimension to seeing the animals.  Our final tour was of the Sheikh Zayed Education Centre, a truly magnificent architectural masterpiece full of beautiful marble floors, textured walls & ceilings.  The static exhibitions were laid out over 6 levels & very well done with nice transitions between the levels.  We finished with a nature movie in a very luxurious theatre, some of the most comfortable theatre seats I have ever sat on, again it was very well done.

It is by now dark & time to get back to our hotel, we are all very tired.  Thanks to Google & Charles they found the motel with no problem.  Our rooms are magnificent, very luxurious, however, we went straight down poolside for dinner & Jackson with Charles went for a swim with drinks at the pool bar whilst the rest of us had a delicious Arabic meal.  Another fantastic day.

Day 19 – Monday 1 January 2018

Another lazy day, I’m loving this lifestyle.  We will so miss Austin’s good morning wake up kiss when we get back home.  This morning gaming with the boys, then a couple of hours in the pool followed by a great al fresco lunch Charles put together.  The weather was very pleasant 26C.  After lunch, a bit of Lego building with Austin followed by some xbox gaming with the boys & some more Lego building.  Tereza had another nanna nap today, a worry she might get use to this & she will expect it when we get home.  Monica has been busy getting some of her architectural photographs together to enter 11 of them into an international competition – she is very talented, it would be great if she would win.  Then it was dinner time & Monica made us a delightful chicken schnitzel.  A few glasses of wine & some chatting & planning our trip for tomorrow when we plan to travel to Oman for a few days.  It was a 4 day holiday here in Abu Dhabi because their weekend is the Friday & Saturday but the Sheik decided that the Sunday should be a holiday too, he is generous to his people.  He has also decreed that all religions are to be respected here.  The first day of the new year is over, very, very relaxing, a worry that Ron will get used to this life style & expect it to happen back in Australia too..  Monica & Charles are very good hosts & the boys are gorgeous & loving.

Day 18 – Sunday 31 December

This was a delightful start with a 6.45am wake up kiss from Austin.  Another lazy morning sitting with the boys gaming before lunch.  Off to Yas Island & the Stars & Bands Restaurant for lunch sitting looking over the big boats in the Yas Marina & looking at the spectacular Viceroy Hotel surrounded by the Formula one Race Track.  Lunch was magnificent, Charles & I had the surf & turf wagyu steak & seafood, we both agreed that it would have been one of the best steaks we have ever had, it melted in my mouth.  I was a little envious though of Jackson’s sizzling fajita, that was my second choice.  Tereza said her Australian lamb cutlets were also delicious.  We were so full of nice food that we decided to go for a walk around the marina.

The Yas Island Marina has a lot of very nice boats inside it, the highlights were moored together, an 84 feet catamaran moored next to an even larger yacht with another three over 100 feet long, these are big, expensive very nice boats.  There are lots of smaller very nice expensive boats as well.  We walked around to the Viceroy Hotel & underneath the mezzanine level that joins both parts of the Hotel on either side of the track.  The boys found a fountain which shot up at different times so they entertained themselves for a while running in between the jets of water trying to stay dry.  We moved on further & came across a very nice playground to play at.  More interesting were 2 very beautiful very big yachts.  Charles drove up close to the boats so we could see them & photograph them from close up.  The small one is 198 feet long, the “Caipirinha” & weighs 1,182 tonne.  The larger yacht is the “Pelorus” at 377 feet long & 5,400 tonne.  These are both owned by the same Hong Kong multi billionaire businessman, a totally different way of life than I know.  The Pelorus belonged to the UAE royal family, it was sold in 2016, now they have a much bigger & more luxurious one, but unfortunately it wasn’t docked there for us to see.

We dropped in at a “Winter Wonderland” on the way back, a temporary amusement park built for kids with a large snow hall setup with snow-themed playgrounds for the kids, the air conditioning is turned down low.  We only stayed there for about half an hour before heading back home & more gaming with the boys.  Tereza had a nanna nap for a while.  No dinner for us as we were still so full from lunch.  We went down to the waterfront to view the kids fireworks at 9pm, it didn’t happen.  Next we went down at 10pm, still no fireworks.  We are not giving up we will try again at midnight.  We are watching the latest Dr Who on TV to while away the time.

Midnight & the fireworks at Yas Island arrive on time, very showy & last about ten minutes.  The crowd on the foreshore turn & head back into their apartments. On the way back we look across at the Abu Dhabi city skyline & see the fireworks from the city lighting up the sky, it must be very spectacular up close.  2018 & Happy New Year.