# Other Places Around The World > Europe Travel General Discussion >  >  Trip report to Istanbul / Abu Dhabi / Dubai

## Petri

December is the time one misses sun the most.  The days are short, sun rises around 9:30am and goes down right after 3pm but the odds for a sunny day are pretty slim.  If there's snow, the days are at least bright.  Warm means +5 C (40 F) but it can be below -20 C (-4 F) as well.  This year there has been record amount of early snow, it hasn't been above freezing point since November and one definitely needs a break to see the sun (a proper winter in December is good but..).

 

For a week you don't want to fly too far away.  All of Europe is cold and southern Europe is cold inside as well.  Northern Africa?  Not that warm either.  Caribbean?  Too far away for such a short break.  Middle East?  Hmmm..  Flights for the high season are at premium price but I managed to use British Airways' frequent flyer miles from Helsinki to Kuwait, and return from Abu Dhabi to Helsinki.  The missing leg from Kuwait to Abu Dhabi was covered with Etihad's miles.  The added bonus was that accommodation in Abu Dhabi didn't seem to have any penalty for the high season unlike neighboring Dubai.  Premium vacation for a budget price!

 

19th December.  "UK SNOW CHAOS", "Heathrow Airport is closed", what the hell is happening?!   15 cm of snow and they goes into uncontrolled chaos.  Luckily there's few days left so even the brits should be fine by then.   

"Limited operations", "a third of flights operating", this isn't looking too good.  Following the UK news while looking for plan B's and checking what the insurance would cover.  21th December looks good, BA is not operating the Helsinki - London flights but the flight to Kuwait is flying.  Two finnish carriers are flying to London so as a precaution I manage to change the first leg from BA to Finnair and if that gets cancelled, I'll buy other tickets.  

SSssss****, when everything was looking promising and one was expecting a quiet evening, BA cancels the 22th December flight to Kuwait.  No way we'll go to London to wait there.

 

Plan B kicks in.  Flying through Germany?  Expensive.  Flying through Paris with Finnair and Etihad?   Flying through Istanbul with Finnair and Etihad but a tight connection?  Through Geneve?  Trough Brussels?  Moscow?   Via Kiev with Ukraine International Airlines?  A lot of expensive alternatives.  Anything that doesn't go through central Europe starts to sound good.

Paris isn't known for punctuality and they freak out with snow as well, so it's going to be Istanbul.  Straight and surprisingly inexpensive.  A few hours left to pack, a half-night sleep and to the airport early in the morning.   That was one of the quickest "change of plan"'s we have ever done.   As a safety measure I printed a few hotel details in Istanbul in case we miss the connection. 


Off we go.  Taxi to the airport early in the morning where we meet our friend who is joining us.  She is flying with Lufthansa through Frankfurt and her flights are operating despite the snow problems FRA has been having.  First we have a quick breakfast at the lounge on the Schengen area, she moves to her gate and we head to the non-Schengen section of the airport.  The new electronic border control machines are in operation and I decide to give it a try.  It compares my face to the picture on the passport's chip.  Nothing fancy, no iris scans, no fingerprints.  I pass so even the computer thinks I haven't aged much! ;-)

 

We head to the non-Schengen lounge for a quick drink as we haven't been there before.  Looks nice, contemporary, view to the airport!   It's a pity that we hardly ever need or use the lounges at our home airport.  The Istanbul flights starts boarding, we head to the gate and the flight is pretty uneventful.   Flying to Abu Dhabi through Istanbul is much more straight than through Frankfurt or London so if this works, we'll be sipping the drinks in sun in no time.

We couldn't check our bags all the way to Abu Dhabi (different airline, alliance and ticket) so we need to go through the immigration in Istanbul, collect our bags and check-in.   FFFF  immigration has pretty long queues and it's slow.  Takes about 30 minutes to get through, it's getting tight.  We collect our luggage and head to the departure hall.  We run to the Etihad desks to find no one.  We missed the connection.

But that's OK, it was a calculated risk.  We call one of the hotels for a room and take a taxi there.  It's warm in Istanbul and it's our first time there.  We spent the evening doing some sightseeing; the Blue Mosque next to our hotel, the Grand Bazaar for weird things, one of the best kebab dinners we've ever had.  Not bad and the prices aren't bad either.  We didn't fall in love with Istanbul but it deserves a longer visit one day.  Etihad changed our flights to the next day for a fee and we should arrive to Abu Dhabi as planned originally, just a few hours later.   Not bad for the british screw-up.

 
 

The next day we'll head to the airport, pay the fees for the new tickets and check-in.  Smooth!  It's a small Airbus A320 plane for the 4-hour flight but Etihad provides a stellar service.  All the seats in economy have their personal screens with on-demand video, hundreds of movies and other goodies.  A warm meal with three choices of main course, wine and spirits are available.  Coffee and dessert is offered a bit later which is actually a great idea and makes a longer flight feel shorter.  All our flights on Etihad have been excellent so no wonder it's been collecting trophy's all along, WTA's World's Leading Airline among them.

 

Landing, smooth immigration through the new Abu Dhabi terminal, collect our white car from Europcar and try to navigate to our hotel with the iPad.  Unfortunately the iPad wasn't connected to the mobile network and it couldn't get a GPS fix without assistance.  We had a map but no idea where we were.  These guys are changing the roads on a monthly basis so our maps aren't up to date either.  Somehow we manage to drive motorways we never planned to drive and end up in an area that "looks right".  After 20 minutes of driving around and finding nothing, we head another direction.  Signs to our hotel start to appear and we're finally at right place.  A grid layout makes everything look the same.

Our home for the next five nights will be Fairmont Bab Al Bahr, inexpensive at 130 eur a night for a 5-star property and has both (man-made) beach and a big pool area.  That's all we wanted.  Directly from our room we have a view to the majestic Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque on the other side of the greek.  It's the eight largest mosque in the world and it was opened just a few years ago.  But more about it later..

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## Petri

Visit to Emirates Palace


Emirates Palace is a hotel that belongs to the Leading Weird Hotels of the World, LWHW.  It's huge, it's gold, it's out of this world by all the measures, the most opulent hotel in the world.  It's worth a visit even if you're not planning to stay there.

We stayed there two years ago at the end of our around the world trip, just to finish the trip with some chilling.  The rooms are posh but not outrageous (like Burj Al Arab in Dubai).  The building alone is 1 km long.  They have 128 kitchens in the house.  It has over 100 elevators.  The pool areas are great and kids are 1 km away (other side of the building).  And guess what, it's actually cheaper to stay there than the daily rate for most St. Barth villas -- we could have booked it for 224 eur/night for our trip, that's a bargain for a prime holiday season.



In addition to the ordinary 7-series BMW's and S-class Merc's they also offer transfers with Rolls Royce Phantom's and Maybach's.  The price for the airport transfer from Dubai is actually quite decent and it's probably the cheapest way to sit in a Rolls Royce or Maybach for two hours.

Anyway, the hotel houses several excellent restaurants and they had "the most expensive christmas tree" ever so it was time to pay a visit.

 

The christmas tree has about $12 million worth of jewels as decoration.  No wonder the girls are smiling.

The tree was quite easily accessible..  but I doubt one could get too far away with such a plan for some "special christmas presents".  Tempting, though.

 

As our escape plan was in the works, we also took a look for other options.  One option is the gold dispensing ATM they have in the lobby.  Enter your credit card and get a gold bar of your choice.  If one gets the full price back, that's an easy way to collect some frequent flyer miles.



Dinner

Our choice for the dinner was Hakkasan, an international cantonese restaurant that's already in London, Miami and Mumbai and opened here in June.  Hakkasan in London has one Michelin star and the founder is also behind the Wagamama chain.

http://w3.hakkasan.com/abu-dhabi

We had the best meal of our trip here.  I would describe it as "westernized cantonese", proper cantonese food brought into western culture.  And it was quite affordable, too (~50e/head without wines?).  We enjoyed the food so much that we didn't even remember to take any photos.

UAE has quite many excellent restaurants and we actually joked that Etihad has scheduled their flights from Paris so that the bread from a french boulangerie arrives fresh.  Bread was superb everywhere!

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## GramChop

What an adventure, Petri.  You are living the life I've only dreamt of.  Thank you for taking us with you on your whirlwind travels.  I'm waiting for more.......

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## Petri

Visit to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

 

it's always interesting to learn more about the local culture and in the Middle East islam is a big part of it.

Grand Mosque is the largest mosque in UAE and the eight largest in the world.  Named after the founder and first president of UAE, who is also buried next to the mosque.  The mosque was finished in 2007 so it's quite new.

Accomodates 40,000 worshippers (full only two times a year), two separate prayer halls for women (1500 each).  115 m (377 ft) towers in the corners.  World's largest carpet (60570 sq ft), the largest chandelier, marble, gold, and the list goes on.  But if you think about it, aren't the churches for other religions grand as well?  Vatican and all the duomos weren't average buildings when they were built either.

Why so little space for women?  Because men need to pray, women don't but can if they want to.

Visiting the mosque is easy, just check out the schedules for tours and take a taxi or drive there.  The place is closed from tourists for the praying times but otherwise one is free to walk around the courtyard.  Very simple, nothing scary about it.

 

Women need to loan a black burka to cover themselves and their hair.  Men with shorts also need to loan a white hadith.  Most of the people in the pictures are actually tourists -- they just look local ;-)

 

Our guide was wearing a hadith with a leather jacket.  It was winter after all and just +25 C.  He was a nice guy, less scary than your average TSA employee.  Not that one could learn much during such a short tour but they obviously put an effort to tell about the religion.  Most of the other guides were female.

 
 

A look inside.  The construction has been really international.  Chandeliers from Germany with Austrian crystals, carpet designed by an Iranian artist, made by Iranians from New Zealand wool (because they have so many sheep ;-).  Marble from Italy.  The mosaic on the courtyard is made from different marbles and one can feel the temperature change for different colours.


 

When we finished our tour, we had to start leaving the place as the 12:14 praying time was about to start.

The call for pray is actually broadcasted across the UAE mosques, everyone will hear the same thing.  We also heard it to our hotel from Grand Mosque.  Even at the malls the music will stop for the prayer call.

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## GramChop

What a beautiful piece of architecture, Petri.  

What's next?

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## Petri

Visit to Dubai

Our life would have been perfect by just enjoying the sun and being in the warm, but we had rent a car and our plan was to day trip to Dubai.  We have visit Dubai before so we could focus on the new things; breakfast at the Atlantis on the man-made Palm island and of course, visit Burj Dubai, sorry Burj Khalifa.

 
(Atlantis, The Palm island and Burj Al Arab hotel seen from the distance)

Burj Dubai was supposed to be the tallest building in the world.  They didn't tell how tall it's going to be but it was pretty damn tall already two years ago.  Dubai isn't oil rich emirate like the neighboring Abu Dhabi so they've had to do something else.  They've had their share of crazy ideas; the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel, Emirates the airline which has 15 Airbus A380 planes and 75 of them in order, the man-made island shaped like the world, two (!) palm-shaped islands that are visible from space, etc.  Burj Dubai was one of them.

 

During the financial crisis Dubai was following the path of Greece and Ireland, running out of credit.  With rich neighbors it wasn't such a big problem really, Abu Dhabi, the oil rich emirate promised to bail them out if Dubai gives them the Emirates airline and Burj al Arab hotel among other things.  No way said Dubai and they were ready to accept support from Saudi Arabia.  At the end Abu Dhabi did bail Dubai out and got Burj Dubai instead.  The world's tallest building is now called Burj Khalifa, to honor the Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

 

So here it is.  828 m tall.  2717 feet.  160 floors.  World's highest elevator installation and world's fastest elevators at speed of 64 km/h (40 mph).  They even have world's highest mosque on the 158th floor.  The building also houses Armani Hotel on the first 39 floors.

Getting to the top is more difficult than one could imagine.  We visit Dubai on Monday and the earliest tickets available where for Saturday.  What does one do?  Instead of the ordinary $27 tickets one can buy "Immediate entry" tickets for $109, which we decided to do.  After all there's only one world's tallest building and we're here now.

 
(That's the lift down, though..)

There are small queues, security check and but shortly the lift takes all the way to the observation deck.  Straight from the ground to up there, in about 60 seconds.

 

The nice thing about the observation deck is the quite large open area outside. The railings even have hole in them so one can put head through and take some cool photos.  Or even put your expensive camera through and hope it doesn't fall 800 m down :-)

 

There are camera devices one can use to zoom to the neighboring buildings and offices, with live, night and historical view available.  Feels a bit like target practising really.

 

 
(the long shadow is from the tower)

View to the Dubai main street.

 

Next to the Burj Khalifa is the Dubai Fountain.  Designed by the same folks who did the fountains for Bellagio in Las Vegas, it's quite stunning piece of work.  But this is Dubai so it's of course bigger and shoots up to 275 m, over 900 feet -- twice the height of Bellagio.  Unfortunately the fountains play only in the evening, from 6pm to 10pm so we didn't stay to see it.



And that's not all.  All this is next to Dubai Mall, the world's largest shopping mall based on total area.  12 million sq feet.  1200 shops.  10-15 "malls-within-a-mall".  Waterfalls.  Aquarium and underwater zoo.  Ice rink.   It's just huge and one can find pretty much every brand there.

Even Batman shops there with a special parking lot for the Batmobiles.

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## LindaP

Great photos, what a surreal place. Is that where they have the indoor snow-skiing  fabrication?

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## Petri

What would life be without sand?

The Middle East is a big box of choc^H^H^H^H sand.  From here (from Sahara mostly I guess but) the winds blow the sand all the way to the Caribbean so that the Salma Hayek's and random sbhonline readers can enjoy their piece of the paradise.

For the last two days we booked room at the Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort in the Liwa Desert.  With the iPad for navigation we managed to escape the 10-lane highways in Abu Dhabi and all the way to the desert.  Well, the first 40 km is to get away from the city of Abu Dhabi and the rest is a straightforward 150 km road from the coast directly to the desert.  The road had about two bends so we had to watch the navigation carefully.  Luckily the emirate has been smart enough to build a decent 3G cellular network on the road so we could keep updating our Facebook status.

 

And last mile..   We didn't want to have a flat tire on our Toyota Camry here.  (We later discovered that the hotel even had their own helicopter)

 

There is some serious Abu Dhabi history in this place.  The hotel has been built to the Liwa Desert like an oasis.  Liwa desert is the western gateway to the world's largest sand desert, Rub al Khali - The Empty Quarter.  The name of the hotel means "Palace of Mirage".  Liwa Oasis, a belt of some 50 villages and farms is here and this is where the ruling families of Abu Dhabi and Dubai have been born.  In this hotel there is a 35 m (10 ft) deep well the founder of UAE, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan dug with his own hands.

In other words, the birthplace of both the country and the people of UAE, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

 

 

Desert is a really amazing place.  We loved the Sossusvlei and Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia and this desert doesn't make an exception.  It's just beautiful.  The colours and shades are endless and change by the day.  The sand is constantly on the move.

 

We spent the day enjoying the pool, sun and drinks but for all the sunsets we climbed to the neighbouring sand dunes.  To go a bit further, out of sight from the hotel.  Climbing to the next slightly higher dune for better view.  Once again, and again.  It's actually pretty hard work to up but the reward is running down the dunes.

 

When you "run" down the dune, the sand moves under your feet and if it's soft and steep enough, the different types of sand will make a sound.  I even managed to make a really loud sound that kept "singing" for a while after I stopped.  Cool!

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## amyb

So different-thanks for showing thi part of the world to us, Petri.

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## Petri

For the departure morning we decided to book some activity.  We thought about mountain biking but the hotel's options were just for the roads, not to the dunes.  Instead we decided to go for sand dune bashing and the only option was the 6:30am sunrise ride.  Oh well..

Dune bashing is something where you take a 4WD car like Toyota Landcruiser and run up and down the steep sand dunes.  Know what you're doing and everything will be fine.  Don't know what you're doing and you'll be stuck.  It happens.  Unfortunately this wasn't a "real" thing where they'll inflate the tires for better grip but great fun anyway.

I guess our "mandatory life" of driving on the snow could help to learn this skill.

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## Petri

Time to depart

In the afternoon we decided to drive back to Abu Dhabi, it felt a better idea to drive during the daylight.  We spent a few hours at the Marina Mall in the harbor and headed to the new developed Yas Island for the dinner.

Yas Island is an island next to Abu Dhabi that features such a attractions as the new F1 Grand Prix circuit and Ferrari World park.  Other projects in the works include Warner bros. theme park, a water park, a number of new hotels and a large Yas Mall.

 

Our choice for the dinner restaurant was a nice arabic restaurant at the Yas Hotel, it's a hotel that has been built on top of the F1 circuit and has pretty cool led lights around the building.  The whole building feels very organic and "out of this world", like so many other things in this part of the world.

 

In this region it's common for the flights to operate during the night.  One reason is purely commercial, the local airlines want to operate a lot of transit passengers and they want to make their schedules as convenient as possible to the travelers.  What does this mean?  Well, our flight from Abu Dhabi to London was going to depart at 2:30am and arrive to London at 6:30am.

Our plane departed as scheduled, the snowgeddon in London was over and our British Airways flight was pretty uneventful.  With ear plugs, noise canceling headset and a eye cover I even managed to make the 8-hour flight feel like a 2-hour short-haul.  I skipped the breakfast on the plane as we had plans to visit the BA Galleries First lounge for shower, breakfast and champagne bar.

The flight from London to Helsinki was half empty and we managed to nap there as well, in preparation for the NYE party we had invited people to join at our house.  Well, actually we didn't invite anyone but friends did.  We just opened the door -- dressed in burka's and hadith's we had purchased from the Carrefour supermarket for 10 euros.

-10 C (14 F) and snow dunes.  It was very different at home.

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## Petri

Final words

Some people may wonder about traveling to the Middle East, with all the recent history and political climate.  Humans are naturally suspicious about everything different and it's perfectly normal.

Would I recommend a trip to Abu Dhabi and Dubai?  Absolutely.  We didn't think twice about going there when we found out it was a doable trip.

These are quite relaxed destinations.  The local security checks and immigration are friendly, easy and smooth.  They are religious but these are not extremist countries nor extremist people. Just use common sense like everywhere else, respect the local habits and local culture.

The quality of life is high and one can get good value for money in e.g. terms of accommodation.  It's a fine destination for sun.  The place is full of great, high quality restaurants that offer both regional and international cuisine, many top places from Europe have a joint here.  I believe my angus beef hamburger was cheaper than in St. Barth.

There is plenty of history available although the museums aren't exactly Paris.  The religion also offers plenty of cultural sights.  The modern wonders are the future Eiffel tower's and Sydney Opera houses.  They may feel strange but people have been going to the CN Tower in Toronto for 30 years already, too.  They aren't Las Vegas nor they are Paris.

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## Petri

> Is that where they have the indoor snow-skiing  fabrication?



Dubai Mall has just an ice rink.  The Ski Dubai 400m slope is at the Mall of Emirates.

They were building a ski slope to the Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi as well but they turned it into a ice rink instead.  I guess that's more popular and easier for people to try.


I was discussing a job opportunity in the region a few years ago and I couldn't help wondering about giving the headhunter a call to check what's the market nowadays.  Could be fun to live there for a few years..

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## julianne

Petri, Thanks for these amazing reports. What a trip! Your photos of the dunes are terrific----certainly a big change from your snow at home.

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## Peter NJ

Wow!!!
Thanks for that!

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## tim

Petri,

Super report on an amazing trip!

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## Voosh

Outstanding. Thnx for sharing. 

I could've traded the ice and slush here for that sand. Easily. 

Sounds like it was a great trip and y'all are back and safe. Cool.

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## Petri

> Outstanding. Thnx for sharing. 
> 
> I could've traded the ice and slush here for that sand. Easily. 
> 
> Sounds like it was a great trip and y'all are back and safe. Cool.



The less one worries the safer one is..

It went above freezing this weekend (first time since November) and I'd be happy to replace the slush with sand, or proper snow, or anything.  There's so much snow that can and will turn into slush and the salt trucks are turning the main roads into sh*t.  

CNN was filming here an episode for their Future Cities series last week -- "how to handle snow" ;-)

PS. Dune blasting was fun, need to do it properly one day.

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## gosundevils96

Amazing!  

Wonder how many SUVs have been rolled down those dunes...

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