Traveling Jones

Our first full day in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.  We are staying at the Emirates Palace. To call it a hotel is an understatement as it was initially conceived as an actual palace, a guest house if you will, for the royal family who live in the neighboring Presidential Palace. The top floor remains exclusively reserved for the royals, their friends, and diplomatic guests. If a U.S. president were to visit the UAE, they would likely stay here. The venue is a tourist attraction in and of itself and has become an iconic symbol of the country. We will be jaded in all future hotel stays due to the opulence and luxury this place exudes. Some of its amazing stats . . . .  * It cost $3 Billion to build in 2005, ranking it as one of the top three most expensive hotels ever built. *  Owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, run by Mandarin Oriental * It sits on 222 acres and the building itself occupies over 1M square meters (10.8M square feet), larger than Buckingham Palace ...

The Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. 70min Uber ride from our place in Dubai.  Here for 3 days. It is without a doubt, the most luxurious hotel where we have ever stayed. Many more photos tomorrow but a few more from this evening . . . .  The outdoor terrace where we dined tonight at a two star Michelin restaurant

Spent the afternoon at the Dubai Miracle Garden, an attraction covering over 72,000 square meters and comprised of over 150 million flowers. It is considered the world’s largest natural flower garden.  The photo above is one of the most iconic for this place. It’s a full scale floral depiction of an Airbus 380. It is the largest floral structure in the world according to the Guinness Book World Records. It’s sister attraction, the Dubai Butterfly Garden, was  also a cool experience  That’s my shoulder below. This thing just randomly landed on me!   Entrance to the Miracle Garden Umbrellas

Well, we finally got our first rainy day in over 4 months!  The heaviest torrential rain you can imagine. The scene above got much worse and you could no longer see the buildings. Guess we got the annual rainfall all at once!