Friday the 3rd of October

The Residential Palace for the Sheik in Abu Dhabi has been turned into a Hotel and a cultural focus point for the Emirate.

As a building it is a phenomenal piece of architecture and as a Hotel it leaves the new style places looking tacky and under done.

Today I spent three hours walking around what has to been one of the most stylish buildings I've been in. While I was in Europe I saw the Abbey de Founteroude (Spelling my be slightly off sorry) It was a 12th century architecture building that was incredible but this was something else on a totally different scale and design. I don't know what period the Palace was built in but the size positioning and scale is huge. Levels travelling up and down, spreading across the main land in beautiful gardens with pools and terraces down to the beach on the other side.

Inside it has been tastefully up-graded to allow the rooms to become shops, conferences, auditoriums, Hotel rooms, display areas and a museum.

The most interesting part was the presentation on the cultural direction of Abu Dhabi. The founders have hired 6 of the worlds top architects and have had them design a series of museums to present Art and culture to the community.

There are Museums to present and show case Maritime history, performing arts, contemporary, cultural and general arts classifications. The designs are out there. Some are down right ugly but ones like the performing arts centre are fantastic.

Its a 15 year plan to build all of the Museums and a lot of it on land that does not even exist at the moment. They all run along the coast line in varying degrees of habitation in the water presenting the cultural frontage for the UAE.