Today we decided to start our day like we ended yesterday’s, with a walk along the Corniche. Seeing the exact same things. Interestingly, the fountain isn’t working. Why?

Just kept walking and we start to see one beautiful thing after another along the Corniche area. Another water monument and some more beautiful underpasses.

And then we got to our goal of the day, Qasr Al Hosn.

This is a museum in the heart of Abu Dhabi that shows the history of the city and Emirate. It is a fort that has been here ever since Abu Dhabi was nothing more than a fishing/pearling village. From the few pictures we have already shown you, and the many more to come, you can see how much has changed between those years and now.

One of the most interesting stories we read there was about the origin of Abu Dhabi. The legend goes that two Bani Yas were out hunting, and then they saw a gazelle in the desert. As one of the hunters raised his bow to kill the gazelle the other stopped him and told him to look at the gazelle’s feet. There was water! In the middle of the desert. They forgot about the gazelle and drank the sweet water. It is said that the name Abu Dhabi – meaning ‘father of the gazelle’ – comes from this. Super cool.

The rest of the museum generally shows a historical perspective of the royal family that lived in the palace as well as the history of the region. As always, we leave you with just a few highlights of our time there.

The other interesting thing is the architecture itself, of course. How could it not be when it is both a palace and fort? Super cool. And you can pretty much explore the entire thing. The first part of the museum is indoors in a very air conditioned part of the museum, while the rest is open and much bigger. The architecture of the second was much cooler, way more to explore as well.

And it even includes the watchtower that is seen on the Emirati 1000 Dirham bank note (about 350 dollars). This just solidifies how important and historic the fort is.

And a neat little touch to the whole exhibit was this, the ‘Memories of the Palace’ exhibit. This was a two stage exhibit where in the first stage you could sit and record yourself talking about the palace as you remembered it from growing up in Abu Dhabi, with the second stage being televisions that played back these recordings. Super cool to include the living memory of people beyond just the architectural/historic aspects of it as written in official documents.

And then, it was done. We were out of the fort through the back entrance/exit. We had been told when we purchased our ticket that the House of the Artisans was included in the ticket price. We hadn’t thought much more about it at the time, but then the building was right there upon our exit, so we might as well check it out. Especially since, like we said, we already paid for it. What a nice way to start this new section, as if the whole building is just created by artisans, great touch.

And then… wow. That’s all we can say as we walk into the space. Just absolutely wow.

We’ve never seen a gallery space like this, but more should do it. All of the “bubbles” that you see house a different type of traditional art, and they’re all interconnected. You walk from one to the other learning about the traditional arts of the people of Abu Dhabi/the Emirates while on the outside there are modern fusions of these traditional art forms and the more modern aesthetics. And to top it all off? The centre of each bubble had an interactive screen where you could pick your own colours and patterns out and then a piece of traditional art would be created and added to their virtual gallery. So fun, cool, just wow. We fully enjoyed our visit, as we are sure you can tell.

Super cool. Well worth the visit.

And then it was a looooooong walk around Abu Dhabi as we looked for the Etihad Modern Art Gallery. We had seen online that it was well worth a visit, so my partner decided to add in the kilometres of walking to get there. On our walk we saw some more mosques (a lot in Abu Dhabi) and another underpass. You can tell that this city really cares about how it looks, especially around the Corniche area. We enjoy when cities put this effort in.

Then we finally got there. We swore we were lost. We started walking into this dirt lot where some buildings looked like they were abandoned. No way there is a giant art gallery here. Well… that’s because it’s not a giant art gallery. When it was called Etihad Modern Art Gallery we thought it would be huge, but nope!

It was a nice and small space, with a cafe about the same size as the gallery. We definitely were not expecting that. Although, just because it’s small does not mean we didn’t enjoy the art inside.

Well… time to start the long walk back… At least the views make it easier to pass the time along the Corniche.

And my partner was so tired that we just sat and looked at the beach for a while. Just taking it all in and enjoying the scenery. It was so peaceful here. SO different to the constant hustle of Dubai. Strange that this is the capital of the Emirates and it is supposed to be the richer of the two Emirates as well.

Then, as we continue our walk back we saw this footpath. Interesting… Apparently if you walk on this barefooted you can gain a lot of health benefits, as you can see from the sign. As you can kind of see, the path is built from rocks that are placed in different positions to dig into your feet in different ways. So, of course my partner tried it. Some sections were very uncomfortable, others were fine, and the last was hard to maintain your balance. When we started we were the only ones there, but soon enough others followed our lead. This is what we have noticed on our trip, once one person tries something, others quickly follow.

And then we just walked, walked, and walked. Every so often looking back to enjoy the setting sun.

Quite the end to our day, the sunset along the coast of Abu Dhabi. Awesome. Fully enjoyed this day. Especially after all of our failures in Dubai, hehe. But, like in Dubai, we weren’t done yet. We walked by our hotel and continued to the Abu Dhabi Mall.

We went inside to see if there was anything worth buying. What we immediately noticed is that it is so much more low-key than either the Dubai Mall or Emirates Mall in Dubai. Nothing so extravagant, not all of the top brands, nothing like that, just a functional mall. Very interesting. And even though Christmas was now 9 days ago, people are still enjoying the festivities at the mall!

Then we just walked back to the hotel, passing this fountain.

So, this ending to our day is a nice way of circling back to the start of the morning. The fountains are all back on, both here and on the Corniche. Why? Well, we can’t be sure, but our working theory is that the heat of the day would just lead to too much water evaporation during the day if the fountains were running. With the evenings much cooler, the water lasts longer. The second part of our theory also has to do with temperature. More people are out while the temperature isn’t as hot, so the fountains work when there are more people to enjoy them. If we’re completely off the mark, let us know, but this is our best guess.

Anyway, a nice way to start our stay in Abu Dhabi. Good night!