43rd National Day

On Tuesday it was the actual National Day here in the UAE. We spent the morning at the races, as I wrote about in a previous post, and in the afternoon we went into town, to the Abu Dhabi Mall. I had a quick job to do in town, and needed to leave the girls somewhere, where it would be easy to park, and easy to pick them up again.

As everywhere else, there was a lot going on to celebrate there too. Music, dancers and other performances. I was especially amazed by this artist, who was busy constructing a huge portrait, made out of tons of small photos, from all around the country:

Unfortunately we completely missed both the parade, the air show and the fireworks. I really hope that next year we will be able to catch all those very spectacular celebrations.
You still can't miss it's National Day, all, and I mean ALL buildings are decorated or in other ways lit up in the UAE colours at the moment. It's really festive to drive around downtown at night time at the moment. I so enjoy the pride and joy the locals show over their country.

No decoration is too big! This was a car driving around in traffic:

A typical decoration - a sticker with the Sheikh covering the whole car. There are many, many variations of this kind of decoration, some with glitter, some with lights etc:

We chose to stay in town for dinner and went for some yummy mussels. After dinner we went to have a quick drink and enjoy the evening outside as Jenny wanted to try a shisha. They ordered in a 'sweet melon', but they both said it tasted more like waffles and strawberry jam..! :)
Another thing ticked off the bucket list though.