Traveling again...

I'm in Abu Dhabi. the thing about Abu DHabi, is that if you are an American chances are unless you are in the military or are a new commentator or vaguely clued-in politician. You couldn't find it on a map, except by gesturing east of Africa and possibly south of the western bit of Russia. I found it right away, it a city-state in teh United Arab Emirates smack to the left (west-ish) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I got here by taking the national airline of the UAE, Etihad; which is a rockin' good airline. Perhpas I flew Delta too long so my standards are really low but it was grand to be treated like a person on a plane and not chattel.

I do have my camera and I'm hoping to take some more pictures, buttonight its late so I'll just show you around the hotel room. Basically, its like every other nice hotel room I've staid in since I gave up on motels. Its got beds and a big armour with a tv and clean towels and little soaps and shampoos. Butthen in the corner up above the standard issue wall of curtains is the above little green sign.

Can you read it? It shows you the direction to face when you are praying to make sure you are facing Mecca. They had it on the plane too, which was kinda confusing until I figured out that the arrow rotating around the plane on the little map (you know the one in back of the seat in front of you which tells you in many languages that you only have 5 hours until you can FINALLY get out of the flying tin can and its -500 degrees outside and the plane is going a zillion kilometers per hour?) as we departed London was pointing towards mecca. Just as a side note (I do realise that this whole blog is nothing but a side note but really that's why you read it, right?) the sign was pointing to a wword written in arabic which is why I didn't immediately click on the wole Mecca-thing.

Anyway,since I'm an infadel I don't really need to know where mecca is but I thought that was very friendly for them to keep me informed.