Day 17 (2023) Abu Dhabi: Saadiyat Island - Soul Beach

April 21, 2023

Day 17

Visited highlights: Soul Beach

Last night was quite long, so (at least some of us) are pretty exhausted this morning. We decide to have a lazy day and drive to Soul Beach on Saadiyat Island around 10 am. The beach section where we were a few days ago is completely closed, not a single sunbed on the beach... What!? Seriously?

Today there are only 2 sections with sunbeds available. What a joke! It's the weekend!!! We grab some snacks for lunch at Carrefour and there are still some sunbeds available at Soul Beach. By 12 o'clock, ALL sunbeds are taken, but the beach guests are still coming in - for a fee of course (€20 per person on the weekend!) - and they are understandably annoyed about having to sit on the beach without an umbrella and sunbed...

Phew - lucky us.

By the afternoon, it's packed, towels are piled up on the beach.

So, if you're on vacation here, you should definitely avoid the beach and amusement parks on the weekend.

In the afternoon, we head back to the house with a stop at the supermarket to buy barbecue food. We'll be having a BBQ tonight.

Relaxed day - sometimes you just need it 😉

In the evening, we watch the fireworks to mark the official end of Ramadan, which are set off at Yas Marina. A very cool end to the day!

After that, we check in online with Etihad. Unfortunately, the system has distributed us randomly throughout the plane again, and to change that, Etihad wants to charge €55 per person! Absolute audacity! No way. Okay, we'll (again) discuss this at the airport. In Frankfurt, they naturally seated us together as a family 😉