We started our day by taking a long trip to the Jebel Hafeet in Al Ain and upon arrival a flurry of thoughts entered my mind as we looked upon the rocky and dense figure of this great creation of nature. The bus brought us close to the top and from here we had a great view of the city below us and a cloudy sky shone light on a rather tiny town when compared to the gigantic skyscrapers of Dubai. As I was looking down all I could think about was the similarities this mountain had to another place I had traveled to before. I had travelled to Mexico a half a dozen times before and my family and I would always go through a mountainous range and through a road exactly like the one we had just gone through here in Al Ain. It was a great place that reminded me of how similar one place can be to another even when there is thousands of miles in between them.
Next, our second destination was the camel market where we were able to witness firsthand the display of an animal very special to the people of the Emirates. We saw how they were kept in corrals and fed and how their owners handled such a stubborn animal. It was like being in a farm with the slightly pungent smell and dirty floors but it was still a great experience to see how a camel market worked. I was surrounded by these animals that i had never seen before and the setting could not have been more alien and strange. However, we were still in a market just like any other and the only thing different was the product, which in this case were just camels with a particular love for carrots.
Our third and final destination was the Al Ain Palace Museum. It was built before the oil boom so it was a little less eye-catching then other palaces and yet the architecture and buildings were beautiful and they had that old school or traditional look. We explored the room of the sheik and the many other guest rooms in addition to an office and even a shop. It was a greatly built edifice and it gave an insight into a pre-modern era. It is amazing to see how a place from the past like this one compares to one of the many skyscrapers today in Abu Dhabi. And in my opinion, this place is more special than those skyscrapers because it is rarer to see one like it and because it gives us a look back in time.
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