Day 33: Check out "the sandbox", Abu Dhabi palace, biking on Corniche

We'll try to get up "late", i.e., not 4am due to jetlag. Breakfast at the hotel, walk over to the palace Qasr Al Watan, then biking on the Corniche along the beach. Hopefully with a coffee thrown in. 

With only a couple hour nap on the flight, we manage to sleep until 8am. Amazing. Then a really nice breakfast in the hotel, inclusive. I think five different hungry people could each pile their plate for a huge breakfast, and they would not overlap at all in their selection of food. There's that much variety. Well done, Bab Al Qasr.

Oh, and here is the lobby of the hotel. 

Now for the false starts on going to the palace. Kathy has ordered the tickets and sent them to Apple Wallet. But they are hiding behind some other tickets in the app so almost impossible to find. Grrr. Then we start walking, it does not look far on the map. However Google says 30 minute walk, so Dave wants to use Lime e-scooters, conveniently located 50 ft from our hotel. We both get them and get started, but they lurch and aren't comfortable. Return them. Okay, so we walk back to the hotel and get a taxi. Easy. But Google was wrong by about 20 minutes, we could have walked. Hahaha. 😂 Not an auspicious start to the day.

The palace is very large and very imposing, built since 2000 and intended to impress. But before we can begin, Kathy's knee-length skirt is not acceptable by Arabic dress code standards, so she must borrow a longer skirt ("a bag" I think is how she described it, but I thought she looked fine in it and the color was okay for her hair & eyes). Quite annoying, however. 

At this point I need to trot out all the extra adjectives that Erica requisitioned from the AI. The palace was enormous. It was wondrous. It was certainly lavish. The scale is so large, with a 37 meter done fitting nicely on top of the central hall. For scale, the Pantheon done in Rome is 42 meters and it's 2000 years old, built using concrete with a technical recipe we are only beginning to understand. But what have the Romans done for us lately?? Ah, but I digress.

This is a work of art inspired by a quote from the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan:

"Wealth is not money and oil. Wealth lies in people, and it is worthless if not dedicated to serve the people." Perhaps our current leader could take note.

So much polished marble. Such intricate patterns of tile work and stone inlay. Beyond impressive. 

We check out the display of special items. Several first edition and rare manuscripts support the argument that the Arab world preserved, expanded and propagated the knowledge of the ancients (Greeks etc), carrying it forward through the Middle Ages until the Renaissance picked it up.  Also rare artifacts, such as early musical instruments, weapons, and gifts from other heads of state. And a modest amount of history on the founding of the UAE, its leadership (originating here in Abu Dhabi).

The Complete Book of the Medical Art, from 10th century CE.

A relief of the old city of Jerusalem, given as a state gift by Palestine.

Predecessor of the autoharp. Check out the note tuning hardware below.

Finally we return the long skirt, sigh in relief to leave the structured environment of the palace, and taxi a couple miles along the Corniche to a lunch place. Google reviews are right, their food is good. We have ka'ak with falafel & hummus, another with haloumi, and a couple other things. Ka'ak is basically a sandwich. Delicious. And inexpensive. 

Now we start walking to find the rental bikes. It turns out the rental sites are self service bike share depots. The first one has 14 empty docks and zero bikes. We keep walking. At some point we realize that the Corniche is six miles long and we don't want to walk that far.  So we re-navigate to the nearest coffee shop in the bikes' direction. 

While we are aiming for Rain coffee, we run into %Arabica coffee a block sooner. I will say that their iced honey latte is not far off from a Singaporean Kopi cold, and quite tasty. Nice find!!

Finally we are powered back up and can get to the bikes. Nice ride up the corniche and back. But where are the people?? The place is empty. Emptier then New Year's Eve fireworks at Melbourne Dockside. Everyone is working? Islamic modesty? Not a beach culture? Also the walkway has about 10 ft wide for people, 40 ft for shared mobility, then another 10 ft for bikes only. But no people! 

It is unclear why this is, but the beach is clearly very much underutilized. 

A couple of drilling platforms just waiting to be deployed.

Yes, but where are the people??

There are a number of art installations waiting to be installed (or rather spots where something will one day be installed. But currently empty.) But one is installed and quite interesting. It is made of large plastic pieces that lock together. The ultimate shape is interesting, a cross between honeycomb and stack of whale bones. But the technology of connecting them is cool, too. The pieces for together and then a locking pin is inserted that buns them together. See the detailed pic below. What's very cool is that the final shape is nothing like the shape of the single repeated component piece. 

Locking pin is the figure eight metal piece. Ingenious!!

After a couple miles of riding we head back home with a full tailwind. Nice sunset illuminates the palace this evening. Then we shower and order salads via room service. That is so much easier than trying to find a place to order salads when all the good dinner spots seem to be $500/pp expense account restaurants. 

This place is very impressive, but so far not our kind of place.