I flew here in an Emirates A380. My first time in one and I'm not a fan. Soo many people to get on and then off again. And waiting forever for your luggage? I'm not totally against it just not a fan.

I arrived at the airport at Dubai and had to wait for 5 hours for the trains to start running so I could get to the bus station to get the bus to Abu Dhabi. It was a pretty easy process and I got to my hotel somewhere around 10. I have pre booked the room so they wouldn't let me check in. They keep the best rooms empty as long as they can for the walk ups. If someone comes in for a room it is easier to sell a good room, if the room is not up to standard they walk again. This is one of the reasons I hate booking rooms. Also if the room is not what you expected you can't do anything about it. They already have my money. In this case they said breakfast was another 40 dirham. I told them to shove it. That's about $15 for bread and jam and maybe a juice.

Because of this I have lost the best part of a day. Now I probably won't get to see everything I wanted to see but I will give it a go. Some of the places are in different directions so I will have to prioritise. I will just see how I go tomorrow.

First impressions of the place is "a poor mans Dubai?" It looks like they started trying to build different buildings and just didn't quite get there. Then Dubai took over and built some amazing stuff and now Abu Dhabi is trying to catch up. Some of the new stuff is getting there, but I'm not sure they will catch up.

I took the hop on hop off bus today. It was the best way to see as much as possible but I couldn't see everything I wanted. They do a couple of tours and you don't get much time to actually hop on and hop off. If I had known I would have skipped the dhow cruise but the rest was really good. The one day ticket is overpriced but the two day ticket would be great value. I got off at a couple of places. At the F1 track on Yas island. I could have driven a F3 car if I had shoes and my drivers licence. It is very expensive but I would have done it. I still might do it tomorrow. I also got out at Sheikh Zayed Mosque on the way back. The stone inlay on the floors and columns was pretty good to see. I didn't have my Mosque pants so I had to wear a dishdasha. I wanted to get some pics with the lights on at night but it is not as spectacular as I was expecting. So it has been a good day and hopefully tomorrow will be better.