National Day

Abu Dhabi takes its heritage very seriously. See, for example, these poems (you can visit them at Heritage Village).

This seriousness translates into what is surely the most overwhelming holiday we've ever encountered, National Day.

About a month ago, it began, with the first wave of decorations - lights everywhere proclaiming the nation's 42nd birthday (clearly not re-usable from year to year...). We can't remember if the cars, or the flags, or the air shows started next, but at any rate, there emerged cars covered in flags and the leaders' of the Emirates faces....(we must apologize - these photos are totally inadequate to explaining just how far drivers would go in their decorations)....

....flags everywhere - lit up in lights across whole buildings, hung meticulously in each and every window of the Adnoc Office building, on flag poles, covering walls....fireworks sporadically....no pictures of those....and air shows, air shows mid-week, mid-morning, when most normal people are at work, with tiny jets spewing smoke of all different colors....

 ....and Emirates Palace, our normally elegant little dive across the way, lit itself up in intensely bright colors, and flashed green lasers into the sky non-stop. You can only begin to grasp the terrifying glow in our picture. We were scared to get much closer.



That decoration is gone, (really, it's the only one we've noticed to have disappeared so far) and the night terrors in our living room have ceased.

We ran into endless celebration preparations on our rambles around town. An inflatable slide at least a hundred feet tall was erected, along with all sorts of lesser inflatables, covering the entirety of the very-large public beach. A cool display on Emirates history appeared outdoors near Marina Mall, with exhibits going all the way up to 2030 (always fun to read about the future). Guides specialized to each decade waited eagerly to walk us through it, mostly by reading the signage aloud. At the end of each decade, we were presented with yet another glossy pamphlet, documenting the array of growth statistics we'd learned. Some of it was really cool (their interactive statistical maps would make Bank of America sit up and listen), but the one statistic we wanted most was missing - how much the display itself had cost. 



And we're still wondering when (if ever) the flags will come down. It's been a few weeks now, and we're told some decorations will last much, much longer than that...