How do you like to travel? Are you a person who arrives in a new place with a researched list of “must see and do”? Or do you wander side streets and parks, hoping for serendipitous discoveries? Do you want to travel without any of the comforts of the familiar or is it important to have those momentary touchstones?
At a hotel I stayed at recently in Singapore, I was struck by the cross-cultural array of breakfast food: Vegemite, Marmite, marmalade, peanut butter and the universally adored Nutella. Breakfast, it seems, is not a time when people feel culturally adventurous: radical culinary differences need to be confronted when we are fully awake.
As a parent, I am aware of one ironclad travel principle that many people overlook: there is a significant difference between a holiday and a family trip. A holiday is something undertaken by adults not in the company of children. A family trip means taking your entire household operation on the road and (usually) returning more exhausted than when you left. Keep that in mind the next time you’re planning to leave home, especially if you plan to leave home with young children.
Our apartment is cluttered with travel guides of all sorts, some purchased for trips we thought about but didn’t take, and others dog-eared and worn with use. Guidebooks may seem old-fashioned, but I prefer books to travel apps because books become a record of the trip in a way an app on my phone will not. The books also reflect the moment of their writing: we see what the writers thought was important – and, perhaps more importantly, what they ignored.
I am thinking about travel guides these days because I have been invited to contribute to a guidebook about Abu Dhabi, and I am wondering how to frame this city for visitors. That frame includes managing people’s expectations, so that visitors don’t arrive full of preconceived notions about seeing the souqs of “Arabia", full of old rugs, incense and heavy silver jewellery. Perhaps these people will be disappointed by the well-lit shops in the Souq at the World Trade Center or maybe it will help them understand that Abu Dhabi exists in an ancient part of the world but is itself still a relatively new city.
Or, conversely, perhaps people arrive in Abu Dhabi expecting to see the “bling” of the Gulf – pet leopards on Hermes leashes, gold-plated Hummers, women with armfuls of Chanel shopping bags – the stuff of stereotype.
Do we leave those tourists in The Galleria mall eating banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery, or do we take them to the Corniche on a Friday afternoon, when families hold barbecues in the park and men play cricket on the beach?
In a city that changes as fast as this one does, it can be difficult to find places where you feel the real flavour of Abu Dhabi. Even if you’re a city resident, you’ve probably set out for your favourite spot only to discover that it’s now a construction site, or perhaps you’ve given a friend directions based on the old street names and now your friend is looping around a roundabout in Al Bateen, wondering why you’ve sent her to a road that doesn’t exist.
To capture the dynamism of Abu Dhabi, I think you have to be prepared to move around, from the early morning stillness of the mangroves, to the tandoor bakeries near Madinat Zayed, and then out to the kite beach, where the kite surfers dart along the water like dragonflies. No visit would be complete, of course, without seeing the delicate and extraordinary mosaics in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, and then perhaps the grand finale would be a sunset stroll along Saadiyat Beach, where all of Abu Dhabi comes to relax.
Maybe “local flavour” doesn’t come from one spot, but from a mix: it’s the movement between possibilities that illustrates the soul of a place.
What would you include in a guidebook? I invite your suggestions.
Deborah Lindsay Williams is professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi
