Here we go: Stopover in Abu Dhabi

Then I'm off: on the 20th of 100 days off, my Etihad flight leaves Frankfurt for Abu Dhabi late in the evening. For cost reasons, I booked the option with a whole stopover day, as I "only" saw the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque on my last involuntary stopover in Abu Dhabi in 2015. But looking back today, it is actually, in my opinion, the undisputed highlight of Abu Dhabi. ;-)

Immigration went smoothly and I quickly found the bus to the city. With a tourist bonus and no prepaid card for Emirati public transport, I was allowed to travel for almost an hour for free. Since my vacation this year is supposed to be more spontaneous and I hadn't planned anything for the day yet, I randomly got off at one of the many malls and stumbled straight to the sales counter of the hop-on hop-off bus. Quite expensive for one day, but 20% Ethiad stopover discount and some lack of sleep convinced me.

In the end I “hopped” across Abu Dhabi for around 7 hours, but it didn’t blow me away. Real sightseeing cannot be done here. You can/should only marvel at what is being realized higher, faster, further, bigger, more bombastic and, and, and. It was nice to have been here once, but next time the airport will be enough. The city's leader in terms of "bam!" of course in no way inferior. At least there is a lot of comfortable seating here (not like last year in Hong Kong), where I can relax and spend the last 1.5 hours until boarding and the onward flight to Singapore. And, what's really most pleasant: it's a "silent airport", meaning there are no announcements at all, at least in the area where I'm sitting, which gives the whole thing a pretty chilled atmosphere.