Weekend Away (Craig's perspective)

[A guest post from Craig]

Like our month in Dubai, I’d planned for a few weekend getaways. After all, we’re in the Middle East! There’s a lot of fascinating places to explore that aren’t that far away. Eight years ago I spent a weekend in Abu Dhabi doing some research for a client, visiting a few resorts. One of those resorts was so amazing I made a note that I’d have to go back some day. That’s where we went!

I got off work early Thursday afternoon, got gas on my way home, and picked up Laura and our overnight bag, and we headed out for a 2 ½ hour drive to the Empty Quarter. The Empty Quarter is the largest contiguous sand desert in the world, located in the UAE, parts of Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Yemen. You can read about it here.

We drove through the desert and watched the landscape change from typical Arabian desert to small sand dunes and then to larger and larger dunes that got progressively redder in color. We drove near the Liwa Oasis, a small town covering a large area in the state of Abu Dhabi that produces dates. Liwa is the start of the agricultural belt of the UAE, an area that runs through the interior desert through a belt of oases, to Al Ain, the second largest city in Abu Dhabi (and home of the local bottled water).

Once off the highway, we passed through a security gate and onto a two-lane road that went out into “no man’s land” into the dunes. The road was a little harrowing, but we stopped a couple times to take photos of the beautiful dunes. We finally arrived at the resort, literally out in the Empty Quarter and only a couple kilometers from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The resort is called Qasr al Sarab, or Castle of Mirage. It’s designed to look like an ancient castle in the dunes. Driving across a “draw bridge” to the main entrance, we parked, registered, dropped off our bags, and valeted the car before being whisked to our room with a huge tub and a terrace larger than our room itself.

I’ll let Laura fill you in on her experiences at the resort, but for me it was a dream come true—being able to take her to a place I had experienced on my own (what a waste!) and then having a chance to bring her to experience it with me.

The dunes are beautiful and magical. It’s hard to imagine that “piles of sand” could be so gorgeous, but it is. It’s desolate and incredible. It’s hard to imagine people on foot (or even camel) navigating the Empty Quarter. It covers 650,000 sq./m. The daytime is hotter than the city of Abu Dhabi because it’s so far away from the water, but the nights are much, much cooler than the city. The stars and night sky were magical, too.

On Saturday (the end of our weekend) we packed up, checked out, and drove back “home” to Abu Dhabi, stopping at two grocery stores on the way (Waitrose, an expat grocery store from the UK, and Lulu, the hypermarket in our neighborhood mall).

It was a beautiful, relaxing, and amazing weekend.