Super Happy Gazelle: UAE National Day December 2nd photos!

UAE's 37th National Day was December 2nd and was quite an experience.

Loads of cars were decorated with all kinds of detail. There were lots of images of the founding father of the country, Sheikh Zayed. Flags were also in abundance with almost all of the cars having one somewhere on it. Some of the cars were even spray painted with the UAE colors or had loads of red, black, green and white stickers all over them.

And of course, how unsurprising to see a giant flag being towed around the sky by a helicopter. Yes, that tiny little dot in the upper left corner is a full size helicopter that flew around over the waters of the Arabian Gulf along the Corniche. That thing in the bottom right corner is a giant observation tower attached to the Marina Mall, another giant structure all in itself.

Some microlight aircraft few along the Corniche as well, all decorated in the UAE colors, and were even lit up at night. They wisely moved to a safe distance during the fireworks show.

Muhammad and I went to the Hiltonia Beach Resort early in the day and sat around listening to the constant honking of cars, the revving car engines and backfires of Ferraris.... all having their engines sacrificed in the name of National Pride and Patriotism.

After a while we moved to a spot where the view would be even better and met some people who had to sneak into the resort since they were not allowing anyone else to enter. We ordered some food and had some shisha. Roland enjoys a few puffs before the fireworks begin.

And a double apple shisha for me. I am wearing my UAE scarf that I got at the UAE vs North Korea football match.

The fireworks display was pretty good, and the lasers and spotlights from the Emirates Palace lit up the smoke.

Yea I took a lot of photos. The display lasted about 45 minutes and was pretty good. On the other side of us an equally large display went off at the same time, so we heard explosions from in front and back of us. Had we been in another location we might have been able to watch both at once, but as it was, this was good enough.

After the show we walked out to the Corniche Road, which is basically the "Main" street in Abu Dhabi. It was packed with cars and people, and all we could hear was shouting, honking, singing and revving engines.

Here is a short video to give you an idea of what this was all like.

Some of the cars had a little less decoration, or maybe were just done in a a hurry like this one:

Even more looked something like these, with plenty of decoration and UAE spirit:

We even saw 2 old Baja Beetles decorated in UAE colours. I took this one while we were slowly driving off. I would have liked to have a better shot of it, but maybe next year. They really should have a best decorated car contest here, there were so many more that were beyond amazing. The work some people put into making their car a driving symbol of patriotism and pride is beyond description.