Weekend miscellany

Firstly here's a pic of a great little manoeuvre this guy had tried and came a cropper! He could have taken on a slightly smaller vehicle........

I was determined this weekend that, as Caroline worked, I would not spend all weekend indoors. So, yesterday afternoon (Friday) I walked to the Corniche and sat with my paper on a bench looking out over the breakwater to LuLu Island. It was of course boiling hot, but not totally unbearable. I guess it took me 20 minutes or so to get to the Corniche and then I sat for about 45 mins reading. By this time I really needed to get up and cool off. As I walked to go back over the Corniche road to find a drink, I stopped off at one of the many fountains and soaked my head and face in the water, I was desperate by this point and it felt very refreshing! - I know, what a yob!

Having got over the road I went into the Hilton apartments and went to the top floor to use the toilets. The back of the toilet door had another classic sign... see below (best to right click it and open in another window to view it bigger). I found the statement about toilet training particularly strange!:-

By the time I got home again after my drink, I was absolutely soaked again and jumped straight into the shower when I got in.

Today (Saturday), I decided to try going out in the morning instead. It did seem a bit hotter and more humid today. There is a small mosque just 2 tower blocks down from ours. It has an "overspill" area outside with rugs on for worshippers to use. On a Friday even this area isn't big enough and people simply put their prayer mats wherever they can, as near as they can to the mosque. This includes the car parking areas and shop fronts. Here's a picture of the mosque.

There has been a campaign by the The National newspaper recently on road safety issues. One issue that keeps coming up is people not using the bridges that are provided and choose to risk their lives getting across many lanes of traffic instead. As I walked, for the first time, towards Le Meridien I thought I would give the bridges a go. I stopped on one to observe people dashing across the traffic.... idiots.

I never really knew where the Abu Dhabi Tourist Club used to be, but today I found it. Basically, if you went right to the very end of Hamden Street (towards Le Meridien), it would have been on the waterside there. I guess in it's day it was quite a nice facility. I tried to search on the web for pictures of the club, but I couldn't find any. If you have any , or know where I can find some, please let me know. I did however, find some information about it in a tourism brochure from 2005, when clearly it was still open. Shame no one spotted the typo in the brochure though, "Abu Drabi" ??

As for the offer below .... yes please!

I sat for a while at the Meridien and took (yet another!) photo of the construction of the Abu Dhabi Financial Centre on Sowwah Island. Below that is an impression of what it should look like on completion. the new Stock Exchange is on the podium.