We were off of school officially on March 23 and decided to stick around Muscat for a day or two before heading to Abu Dhabi for Part 1 of our Spring Break. We went to Seeb Park where we shot some hoops in the wind and rain and then the next day headed to the Grand Hyatt to spend a day by the pool with our friend and colleague, Jess. We got some serious sun and were nice and burned for our trip to Abu Dhabi by car on March 31. We made sure we had the proper insurance for our car and headed for the UAE border at 9:00 am. All went well with our drive through the desert despite getting a bit turned around in Sohar (Oman road signs don't do much good). We crossed into UAE at about 1:00 without incident and were on our way to Abu Dhabi and Yas Island with the traffic passing us like we were standing still.

We had a good time exploring Yas Island driving around and looking at Ferrari World, Yas Waterworld, Yas Mall and yes, even Ikea was on our to-do list of things to see (we needed a little glimpse of home). Our trip to Abu Dhabi included a trip to Dubai where we visited Dubai Mall in search of a hoverboard scooter for Layla. After an exhaustive search of the mall we found one right as we were heading for the car! Layla's lucky day!

After Dubai we decided to head to Masdar City, an ecologically-sound community that is solar powered and has self-driving, solar-powered cars. Very cool.

Our short trip to Abu Dhabi came to an end on March 29 as we crossed the heavily guarded border back into Oman to go back to Muscat in preparation for the next leg of our Spring Break in which we would travel to Jordan!