My, she was Yas

Yas (Arabic for "wow") Island is a man-made island about halfway between the Corniche on Abu Dhabi Island, where we live / work, and the airport.  Until this weekend we haven't spend much time there -- one of the first weeks here we drove through and made a quick stop into Ace Hardware to check out the bookstore / cafe (yes, THAT Ace Hardware, and yes, it was misguided).

This weekend, we allowed Yas to try and live up to the name.  Yas is best known for its Formula One racetrack -- in fact, the race was last week, when we were safely out of the country.  This week it hosted an event we were more interested in: the Abu Dhabi Striders Half Marathon.

The race was Friday morning, and by coincidence we had a friend who was hosting a barbeque on northern part of the island on Thursday night.  Most of the people at the barbeque work for the American Embassy, and have done stints all over the world.  For now, we are all in Abu Dhabi, and had a great time grilling and chatting on the pitch-black beach...because Yas island is so empty, the sky was full of stars!

The half marathon is the biggest running event of the year in Abu Dhabi.  This year Yas Waterworld played host, and we were able to hit most of the highlights of the island during the race.  Ferrari World (the red blob on the map) is the world's largest indoor theme park, and it certainly felt like it took a long time to run around.  We also ran by the Yas Viceroy, on a road that crosses over the F1 track.

 

At the finish, we reunited with some friends from the Striders and headed into the park.  There was a fabulous post-race buffet (!) breakfast and we had free entry for the day.  Yas Waterworld is home to the world's largest slide-within-a-slide (check out this recent article for some more interesting UAE world records).  Neither of us is a big theme park aficionado, but we did try out one somewhat horrifying slide, and otherwise sought out the family friendly rides (drifting around in an inner tube, etc).  Around 11 am when we left, we walked by a jaw-droppingly long line to enter the park; it must be longer in the summer!  Afterwards, it was back to Ace Hardware with a long list to get our apartment fully set up -- this time the shopping trip was more successful.