Trip to Jebel Dhanna

We just had a very relaxing, peaceful weekend at the Jebel Dhanna Resort Hotel. It took us about 2.5 hours driving time from our villa to get there - it's about 250KM west of Abu Dhabi. The outside of the hotel is like a lot of Arabic hotels - it looks quite plain, but inside it is quite plush and spotlessly clean. The hotel was pretty empty and the staff were falling over you to be helpful. The rooms were very nice, but really like a typical business hotel in style. The service was faultless really. Apart from 2 or 3 other couples it seemed like the hotel was mainly occupied by various expats from the oil & gas industry (well I am assuming this - I don't really think there is much other industry around). The beach was empty which made it lovely and quite - just what we needed. Caz did get rather burnt though! The umbrellas have call buttons on them for the waiters - perfect! (for lazy gits like me anyway). You used to be able to take day trips form this resort to the island of Sir Bani Yas, but this isn't possible now as you can only visit if you are staying on the island resort (which you can now fly to from Abu Dhabi).

One night in the bar we saw this oldish arab man come in looking a bit agitated, his hands shaking (we thought maybe he had Parkinson's or something), but he went up to the bar ordered a double vodka and downed it in one! He then straight after ordered a beer and then necked that! A younger guy (maybe his son) came in a tried to persuade him to leave. They walked off towards the exit but a few minutes later he came back ordered another drink and downed it. His wife then arrived and the three of them sat down. He ordered another beer. Necked it down. He went to the bar and had another vodka! Then the younger guy managed to get him out to the car! He must have downed 6-7 drinks in about as many minutes! I'm sure he will be struggling to get up to morning prayers at the mosque this! Was bizarre to watch.




We were there for our 5th wedding anniversary. The flowers I had ordered duly arrived in the room which was good. 5 years seems to have flown by! There is no way 5 years ago we would have thought we'd now be in Abu Dhabi! Here's a reminder of the day!





On the way home we couldn't avoid some bad driving - it wouldn't be the UAE without it! First, in the middle of nowhere an oil tanker had overturned - no idea how!










Then on the way back we stopped at an ADNOC petrol station and as we sat eating our bought garage crap we saw a 4x4 leaving with a trailer carrying a quad bike or dune buggy. Nothing unusual in that, but the right hand wheel of the trailer had completely lost it's tire and was just running on the metal of the wheel! We caught up with it several Km down the motorway and I managed to get a video clip....

Click here if you want to see the whole photo album from Jebel Dhanna http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/neilroberts01/JebelDhanna#