Abu Dhabi

On Sunday I flew to Abu Dhabi for a few days. I flew out of Manchester via Etihad Airways. I had tried to get a flight from London but they were all really bizarre times. Etihad was recommended to me by our guys in the UAE. They're the national airline of UAE which I actually thought was Emirates. Anyway, they were very good, really smooth flight, good service, food etc.

We landed in Abu Dhabi around 20:30 - the temperature was 40 degrees!! I go tpicked up by the taxi and taken to my hotel - the Al Diar Capital Hotel. This was OK...nothing special. I ordered some room service and went to bed. The next few days were taken up with work and I travelled to Jebel Ali on Wednesday. This is about halfway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. On the way I noticed a sign saying that they're building 70km's of new coastline!! I must say that the building work in UAE is phenomenal. They essentially extended the coastline in Abu Dhabi to make a new motorway and promenade area called the Corniche. This is also the area that apparently Top Gear closed to film three Bugatti Veyron's along it. I think this is to be broadcast in the next series.

The temperature was very hot and interestingly, apparently pretty humid. This surprised me as I thought being a desert it would be dry, however not so in the summer I gather. An =other intersting fact is that of the 4 million or so people who live in UAE, only around 800,000 are Emiratians. The rest are migrant workers, particularly Indians.