Abu Dhabi Diary, Part 2

After arriving in Abu Dhabi we met the ” It Girls”. A 13-piece dance troop who had flown out with us, but until we got there a lot of us didn’t realize this. All blonde, all attractive and all of them were very aware of it.

It transpired that the girls weren’t overly social with the band and were dare I say it . . . a little shallow. But we had a laugh and re-christened them the “I.T. girls”. A few of us took it in turns to try and explain to them why the joke was funny as the others watched their confused reactions.

We also met Maggie!! She was basically in charge of us, put up with Chris and made sure we didn’t get into too much trouble. She was awesome and a really good laugh. After we left the airport we bundled onto our minibus and headed out to our hotel. Did I mention we were staying in a 5-Star Hotel??

Well we were. 🙂

I think this photo of Mark sums up our response to the room:

The fact that there were 3 more doors inside the bathroom was pretty special. My favorite part of the room being the remote that controlled lights, air conditioning and a bunch of other things. (What a kid.)

Despite it being 11 pm in Abu Dhabi it was still 7pm by our internal clocks so we jumped into a few black Merc’s and drove out to the Emirates Palace for a bite to eat.

Now if there was any hitch to this trip it was this. After seeing the Palace for the first time and walking through this incredible place we were a little disappointed that we were lead to the staff canteen. We’d clearly gotten used to the high life far too soon.

Andy and Mr Mr McCloud sum up the general feeling in this shot.

I didn’t mind the curry with more bones than meat, the grapes with more seed than grape and the tasteless yellow block of … well, yellow. The fruit juice was pretty good all though Fi the backing singer tried to convince me it was radioactive. It wasn’t too bad. At least we got to eat breakfast in our hotel everyday (which was amazing) and we would sample what the Palace restaurant had in store for us later in the week.

After that we took a stroll back to our hotel; The Intercontinental, and sat around in the bar feeling not very tired but eventually calling it a night when the joke telling began.

The First Day In Abu Dhabi

It might seem from your perspective that so far it’s been all play and no work. Well I’ll have you know that after Mark and I got lost trying to find the breakfast restaurant in the morning we set straight to work.

Well, I say work. . . I mean chilling out in the sun, by the pool, drinking ice cold beer. 😛

Being a musician is great!!

It wasn’t till the afternoon that we went back to the Palace to eat at the canteen (the I.T. girls deciding that after eating their once they’d never return) and scope out the Ball Room where we were to play on new years. But before all that it took us a fair amount of time to get through security with all the stuff we’d taken out on the plane, i.e. Mr McClouds Percussion. After half an hour of driving around the Palace grounds being passed from one security check point to the next we called Maggie in to save the day.

See a happy Chris standing by the metal detectors with Maggie on the right sorting things out!

After we got in, ate and dropped off our stuff we headed back to the hotel where we met one of Chris’s mates who were storing the PA and kit that had already been taken out to Abu Dhabi.

John was a legend. He told us all about Abu Dhabi and took a couple of the guys in the band on a beer run – which is quite an exciting story in a dry country. Apparently they drove down a back alley and up to a door to place their order and “make the exchange”. But I have to say, with such tight alcohol laws it felt a very safe at night. There weren’t any drunken football fans trying to fight you or drugged up teenagers trying to mug you. Which was nice 😛

We ended the night by piling into one of our hotel rooms and ordering a load of room service until the early hours of the morning.

I know that we haven’t even blown/hot/strum or sang a note yet, but that will come in the next installment!!

to be continued