We went for a drive up to Hatta yesterday, which about an hour 
and a half north of Al Ain. The best part of the drive up there is when you take one of the back roads which takes you driving along a far more authentic looking desert road with mountains on one side and dunes on the other. This road also doesn’t have the typical camel fences so it was nice to see them wandering along not too far from the road for a change.
The roads that runs into Hatta has an endless number of carpet and pottery stalls, which are actually rather well known. One thing we found about the ones we did look at though is that while the prices may be cheaper than Dubai, they really didn’t seem very low compared to Al Ain.
We actually went up to see the Hatta rock pools, but nothing is ever that easy. They are not easy to find and directions are somewhat limited (unless you buy the UAE Off-Road guide, which we didn’t have at the time). After much searching we didn’t actually find the “pools” but did
get to see Hatta, cross back and forth over the Omani boarder a few times, drive around the mountains, and found what I will call the “Hatta Dam”, which is the reservoir for the local bottled water company. There is also a great little heritage village. Hatta is definitely a small little traditional looking town with many little towers and the odd fort spread around in the hills... but being far too hot to wander we basically decided to give Hatta a miss until it is much cooler.
So what do you do when you drive all the way to Hatta, can’t find the pools, it is too hot and are getting hungry? Drive another hour or so to Dubai of course! Actually we made the decision that since we had travelled so far it would be a good time to go and check out the main Ikea at Festival City. It was huge in comparison to our previous Ikea experiences! We finally found some bookshelves, which was good because we hadn’t been able to find any big ones that didn’t cost a fortune, and filled up a trolley with bits and pieces.
So a drive somewhere where we could potentially have a swim ended up as a rather long round shopping trip!
and a half north of Al Ain. The best part of the drive up there is when you take one of the back roads which takes you driving along a far more authentic looking desert road with mountains on one side and dunes on the other. This road also doesn’t have the typical camel fences so it was nice to see them wandering along not too far from the road for a change.
The roads that runs into Hatta has an endless number of carpet and pottery stalls, which are actually rather well known. One thing we found about the ones we did look at though is that while the prices may be cheaper than Dubai, they really didn’t seem very low compared to Al Ain.We actually went up to see the Hatta rock pools, but nothing is ever that easy. They are not easy to find and directions are somewhat limited (unless you buy the UAE Off-Road guide, which we didn’t have at the time). After much searching we didn’t actually find the “pools” but did
get to see Hatta, cross back and forth over the Omani boarder a few times, drive around the mountains, and found what I will call the “Hatta Dam”, which is the reservoir for the local bottled water company. There is also a great little heritage village. Hatta is definitely a small little traditional looking town with many little towers and the odd fort spread around in the hills... but being far too hot to wander we basically decided to give Hatta a miss until it is much cooler.
So what do you do when you drive all the way to Hatta, can’t find the pools, it is too hot and are getting hungry? Drive another hour or so to Dubai of course! Actually we made the decision that since we had travelled so far it would be a good time to go and check out the main Ikea at Festival City. It was huge in comparison to our previous Ikea experiences! We finally found some bookshelves, which was good because we hadn’t been able to find any big ones that didn’t cost a fortune, and filled up a trolley with bits and pieces.So a drive somewhere where we could potentially have a swim ended up as a rather long round shopping trip!
“A” showing his multi-lingual ability by sitting in IKEA reading one of the Swedish “prop” books
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