Last weekend the whole of the UAE got their red, white, green and black on and celebrated the 42nd National Day of this fine place that we all, for the moment, call home. For me, I was celebrating my sixth National Day as a resident of Abu Dhabi.
My husband and I arrived at the end of November 2008 and since we were shipping most of our furniture from our shoebox – I mean flat! – in the UK we stayed in a hotel for the first week or so of our residency. No big deal, it gave us a chance to scrub the bathrooms and give the kitchen cupboards a thorough clean (I still welcome/horrify newcomers to the city with my cockroach tales) before we actually moved in. But when our shipment of stuff did arrive we were more than glad to finally move into our new home on the Corniche.
A few days in we quickly realised that we needed to fill our brand new fridge and sparkling clean cupboards with stuff and that we desperately needed to replenish our cleaning supplies. How fortunate, then, that hubby had a couple of days off work for National Day and that we’d just got a car! So that afternoon we made ourselves as presentable as we could and set off for Carrefour in Marina Mall, just 15 minutes the road from us.
A few epic shopping hours later and the boot of the car was stuffed with all manner of goodies to stock cupboards, fridge and freezer and we were off back home. It was a bit snarly leaving the car park but we made it out and turned onto the Corniche in front of the Hilton, and that’s when we hit it. Gridlock. We figured it couldn’t possibly last long and I started to gently fret about the frozen peas – ok ice cream – that was slowly defrosting in the back. An hour later and we’d had three arguments about whose fault it was that we were in this predicament and there was a tense silence. An hour after that the penny had finally dropped that we were in the middle of the National Day parade (the backfiring cars may have given us a little clue) and we decided that we’d salvage what we could when we got back to the house but in the meantime we’d just go with it and we thoroughly enjoyed accidentally finding ourselves in the middle of our first National Day!
The next year, and every year since, instead of diving into the foray we’ve taken advantage of where we live with a balcony facing the Corniche and invited friends over to enjoy the festivities from a few floors up. It’s incredible to see the crowds on the seafront, it’s amazing looking at the fantastic cars and it’s a huge amount of fun watching the kids running from car to car – we lose nothing of the atmosphere for not being in the middle of it and for those who don’t live close enough to walk home we happily provide a bed for the night.
