Journeys with George: Abu Dhabi-Abu-Dha-Bu-Wa!
I am probably the only person that gets my lame little title. In Man on the Moon, the Jim Carrey movie about Andy Kaufman, he sings a song with those lyrics at Carnegie Hall. Anyway…
While Air Force One traveled to both Abu Dhabi and Dubai, which I really wanted to see, the charter sadly only hit Abu Dhabi. We arrived in the UAE after an hour long ride from Bahrain (where the big news was the President holding up a sword at the Arrival Ceremony). Upon arrival some of the press headed to the speech site at the Emirates Palace Hotel - which cost a few billion dollars to build and is insanely big, I hear.
One of the things about these trips is that the time to explore is minimal. Israel was the one place where we had the most time to wander around, and it was great. For the first three countries on the itinerary, I took the majority of my pictures through hotel and car windows. I would have loved to walk around Abu Dhabi a little bit, but there was simply no time as we hit the ground running doing everything from issuing press releases and answering logistical questions to finding a nurse for a very sick member of the press corps.
From what I saw, Abu Dhabi is very nice. We passed some very nice buildings on the way in, and much like Manama, there is a lot more being built. It seems that they place a lot of value into their tourism industry and have invested a great deal into hotels and beaches.
Now a few things I failed to note in previous dispatches. One of the Embassy guys in our van the night of the Kuwait City adventure ran into me outside the press charter before we boarded the plane. He grabbed me really quick and shook my hand saying, “It was very nice to meet you, I prayed for you last night. I will never forget your name ‘Pete Seat.’” I could only muster a “thank you, very kind, it was wonderful to meet you” and I boarded. Later I figured he was probably praying that I would be nicer than I was that night (I was pretty irritated). In all seriousness, it was the first time a relative stranger has said something like that to me - it was a little bit of shock and extremely nice.
When I got into my room at the Ritz in Manama, I noticed a small envelope on the coffee table. It was a handwritten note from the hotel manager welcoming me to the Ritz - on the envelope my name was spelled: Prete Seate. I’m used to seeing “Peat” - but that was a first!
Did I mention the three hour tour of darkness in Kuwait City?
Random: but I try to do a few things in each country. 1) Take a picture of a McDonalds or Burger King, thus far 100% failure; 2) take a picture of a police car - thus far 75% success; 3) grab a pen/pencil with the name of the hotel, thus far 100% success; 4) get some of the local currency, thus far 75% success.
Baggage call was 11:45pm since we are left the hotel at 7:00am for the trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where we spent two nights. My original plan was to call the next e-mail Journeys with George: Sand. But I’m now debating…
