Wedding Anniversary trip to Al Ain

Written by Fiz

We had one of the nicest time in Al Ain for our first wedding anniversary. Man, how time flies. Al Ain is a town that is part of Abu Dhabi. This place comes highly recommended from many and after the trip, I can see why. We stayed at a hotel on top of a mountain call Jebel Hafeet. Its got an awesome view of Al Ain below and the landscape around that area is simply breathtaking.

We spend the whole weekend just lazing around and the weather was very cool and chilly. After spending 10 months in heat, this is a welcome turn of weather. There is a man made park below the mountain (called Green Mubazzarah)where tons of locals and tourists go for a picnic or camp. Ooo - and I also had my first hand try at shisha and manage to smoke it all the way through. Its quite an experience, very relaxing though I did feel a bit light headed after. You guys have to try Shisha if you are even in Middle East. We smoked the shisha inside this Arabian tent overlooking the valley below. All I can say is Wow.

Ref- Shisha is a water-pipe used for smoking tobacco in different flavours. So far Ive tried double-apple and grape. Very nice.

It is obviously a nice turn of events since we are so used to seeing flat sandy desert everywhere we go. Apart from Al Ain, only Fujairah and Hatta have high landscape of hills and mountains.

Funny enough, the whole time we drove up that mountain and seeing the hotel and a palace on top of that mountain, I keep thinking about the poorly paid labourers that had to suffer to build all that. I am sure that records of death and injuries for that particular project must be hidden and away from public knowledge.

Here are some pictures:

This is actually an indoor swimming pool! There is a stream that flows from the top of the mountain and due to strict dressing codes in UAE, they build a building to cover the pools.