Abu Dhabi I: Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

The day we headed to Abu Dhabi we woke up to a sand storm. The desert sand here is so fine it gets into everything, and what seemed like haze and fog outside was just sand dust. It's all we saw during most of the hour and a half road trip to Abu Dhabi, but was over when we got there.

Abu Dhabi is the largest and richest of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates and is also its capital. It, too, is experiencing a building boom and you see new high rises everywhere. There must be a labor shortage because some construction workers are made out of cardboard.

One of the most important landmarks is the majestic Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the largest mosque in the UAE and one of the most opulent in the world. Its building materials include marble, gold, semi-precious stones, crystals, and ceramics. The ornate inside includes seven chandeliers brought from Germany that incorporate millions of Swarovski crystals.

It features beautiful Moorish archways and tall classical Arab minarets. There's a minaret on each of the four corners of the courtyard and, although we didn't count them, 82 domes of seven different sizes.

Everything here is big: the courtyard, with its floral design, is considered the largest example of marble mosaic in the world, and the carpet in the main prayer hall is supposed to be the world's largest.