After enjoying our last night in Turkey smoking a sheesha with Bryan and Glynda at the Shangri-La, we boarded our plane for Abu Dhabi, the first leg on our homeward journey.

We arrived in Abu Dhabi and checked into our beautiful hotel, the Royal Rose, which has a stunning chandelier in the foyer. The next day we waited in the foyer for our tour guide to take us on a private tour of Abu Dhabi. We were expecting a nice car to pick us up because the tour had cost us quite a bit, but were surprised when a tiny little Toyota Yaris turned up. The back seat was torn and there were used water bottles in the doors. We shoe-horned ourselves into this tin can and started our tour.

Our tour guide, it turns out, was the brother of the tour guide we should have had. She had double-booked herself and sent him in his personal car instead. He had only just got his drivers licence. We explained to him that we had to be back at the hotel at 1:30 for our transfer out to a desert resort and he confirmed that was ok. Zak had the personality of a sloth that has been dead for 3 weeks.

Our first stop was the Atlantis Hotel. This massive hotel has been under construction for 8 years. It is sitting empty because it is sinking on one side and so they have to tear it down and rebuild it. It has never seen one guest. Someone's getting their middle-eastern butt kicked across the Sahara for that one.

We spent the next hour and a half backtracking across Abu Dhabi because Zak didn't know when anything opened, so we turned up, were turned away and then had to come back later. After trying twice to get into the former royal palace, we finally got in and he didn't know where to park. After driving around in circles, we finally parked and went into the palace, which is now a hotel. It's claim to fame is a café which serves coffee dusted with 24 carat gold. We wanted to try this, but were told by Zak that we had an appointment at the Grand Mosque at 12:00 and didn't have time to stop. This is after wasting an hour and a half driving around in circles.

He then took us to the original castle that Abu Dhabi was founded on. He again didn't know where to park and after almost hitting a truck, we ended up parking half a kilometre away and walking across a concrete piazza in 47 degree heat. By this stage it was 11:30. We started a guided tour of the castle. It was very interesting, outlining the whole history of Abu Dhabi and UAE, and we would have liked to have seen more of it, but unfortunately we had to rush through it because it was a 20 minute drive to the Grand Mosque and it was now 20 to 12.

We rushed back across the piazza to the car and drove to the mosque. By the time we got there it was almost 12:30 and again Zak didn't know where to park. We parked in the wrong place, got out of the car and started walking, were told off by a guard, had to go back to the car and drive around some more before he found the underground carpark.

Fortunately, they still honoured our appointment time, however it was a 35 minute drive back to the hotel and after walking 20 minutes to get to the mosque from the car park, we only had about 15 minutes to spend at this massive structure before having to rush back to the car.

Despite this stress, we loved the Grand Mosque. It is the largest mosque in the country, able to accommodate 41,000 worshippers at once. It is made from white marble with inlaid flowers in the floors, walls and columns. It holds the 2nd largest chandelier in the world and the largest hand-woven carpet in the world. It is truly magnificent.

Anyway, we rushed back to the car and after taking 2 wrong turns on the way back to the hotel, we finally got back just before our transfer arrived.

We got into our transfer vehicle (which was much nicer than Zak's) and drove 2 hours into the desert, eating the provided dates on the way, which by the way are delicious. They're not the dried out kind we have at home. They are quite plump and tasty.

Our destination was the Qasr Al Sarab desert resort. This place is in the middle of nowhere, smack in the middle of endless miles of yellow and orange sand dunes. The architecture is made to look like giant sandcastles and it is a beautiful place.

We spent two days there and mostly floated in the pool because it was 47 degrees and too hot to do anything else. We did climb the largest sand dune next to the hotel one morning before it got too hot. We also ate a lot of dates. There were dates on arrival, dates delivered to us every night and free dates in the lounge. We had dates coming out of our dates.

Then it was back to the Royal Rose in Abu Dhabi for one night before our return flight home.

So, after 6 months (183 nights) we have visited 9 countries, stayed in 74 hotels and AirBNBs. We had 10 friends and family members stay with us along the way. We did 7 road trips, covering a total of 9,734 kilometres. This is like driving from Melbourne to Perth 3 times. We also took 2 trains 1,184 kilometres, 1 river cruise for 220 kms and 5 ferries 153 kms. We took a total of 23 flights on 12 different airlines, covering 46,926 kilometres and 67 hours flying time. This is almost 7,000 kilometres more than the circumference of the earth. We also walked 1,682 kilometres, or 2,057,743 steps. This is the equivalent of walking from Melbourne to Brisbane. We're going to sleep for a week when we finally get home!