Abu Dhabi

Given that Abu Dhabi, along with Dubai, has become the architectural standard for vertical outlandishness and neck-craning beauty, it’s hard to imagine that none of it existed 50 years ago. It was just a tiny bedouin fishing village along the edge of an endless desert. It’s crazy. But the old world is still very much alive in this Jetson-esque city, as you can see in my photograph of a dhow sailing up the harbor. While the dhow is newly built, it was crafted the same way the Arabs built their dhows 600 years before Christ. I love that. The ancient Arab world colliding with the new Arab world.