The Emirates Palace

(click to zoom in)

Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi

The most luxurious hotel I have ever seen. No expense was spared building this place. A pattern that seems to repeat in this corner of the world. It cost USD $3.0 Billion to build and it spans 850,000m2. The largest room, The Palace Grand Suite, has 680 m2. If you can't picture that, imagine a 26m x 26m square, or half the white house (look at red square in photo below).

Standard room (60 m2) - usd $400
The Palace Grand Suite (680 m2) - usd $11,500

Better start saving...

I took a few photos but you can't really appreciate this place from the ground so I've made a Google Earth screenshot as well.

Oh ... and did I mention it's a 7 star hotel :)

(Emirates Palace grounds)

(680 m2 - half the main White House building)

Sheikh Zayed Mosque

Built in honor of the late father of the UAE - Sheikh Zayed, this is the largest mosque in the UAE. It's built entirely of marble from Italy, Greece and Brazil (plus some others). It holds the record for the largest dome in a mosque, the largest chandelier in a mosque and the largest single piece carpet in the world. I recommend you take a guided tour of this place, since the attention to detail is amazing and you will miss all of these small things if you just stroll through.

A few interesting facts:

• The marble in the courtyard is always cold, even if the ambient temperature is 40 degrees C.
• Most of the gold (and there is a lot) is 24 carat.
• It cost 1 billion dollars to built and it still isn't finished.
• The chandelier weighs 9.5 tones and is suspended from 3 steel cables, each capable of holding 11 tones.
• The carpet was made in Iran by 1200 weavers and was brought here in 9 separate pieces. It was then woven together on site by the same 1200 workers. Don't quote me on this but I think it weighs around 40 tones. It was made out of wool from New Zealand.

Make sure you check out the location and layout of the mosque in the satellite map above. Do you know which direction it's facing?

Panorama of Sheikh Zayed Mosque on CleVR.com

Dubai, U.A.E.

My next big destination and my current location. Almost everyone know knows or has heard of Dubai at some point. 1 of 7 emirates, it is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Or at least it was until the recession hit. Things have calmed down and contrary to popular belief, life in Dubai is just great. Recession what ?

There's a good reason why BUY rhymes with DUBAI ;)

(Nice air quality don't you think?)

In the days to come, expect to see short reports about destinations around the Emirates.

I'm here for a while :)