We had the joy of making another move over the past few days. Truth be told, I still have a few things to take over, but our official get outta here date is Wednesday, so I’m good. There is not an oven in our kitchenette in the new place, so I am baking off some things to freeze for use over the next month. It also helps me use up some of our groceries. It is amazing the amount of stuff one can cram into a 900 sf apartment. Much of the additional stuff is grocery related, but nevertheless there is more to move this time. Still though, with the exception of the bicycles (which we rode) it all went in a couple of cab loads.
As you may know, we have been looking for a liveaboard for a while. We thought we had found one, but were saved from a disastrous purchase by a really fantastic boat surveyor. Now we are looking at 2 more simultaneously, and hope to have this all figured out within the next couple of weeks. Then we will wait for delivery and hope it arrives before the summer heat arrives for our last move.
Our lease here expired at the end of February, and they extended us 1 month beyond. New management came in and insisted we sign for another year if we were going to stay. Not happening… So we moved. We went out in search of suitable short term places, most of which here are hotel apartments. We looked at several, each with pros and cons, and all priced within our budget. I should tell you that it is interesting getting to the person who can answer the question about pricing. Here there is one person who will show you the room, another that will give you information about the building and amenities, and yet another who will give you pricing. The latter is never on site (even if they really are.) You must contact them via email or text. They will not answer any questions prior to you physically coming to the building, and then will only answer if you provide your contact information so that they may constantly pursue you once you have indicated interest. It is a cumbersome and annoying process, which takes up way too much time.
The last building we looked at was the place we had been staying when I initially arrived. It is a middle range hotel, but very well located in the area we prefer to be. We walked in and were greeted as family members by the staff. They all came in, greeted me, and shook Larry’s hand. They remembered our names (Mr. and Mrs. Larry of course) 
and asked when we were ‘coming home.’ We left smiling and knowing that they had a room available for us. Larry reached out to the business manager, who responded within minutes with a pr
ice better than we had paid previously, and for a much larger and brighter apartment than we’d previously been in. We accepted, and are now back where we started this adventure so many months ago.
There are a few differences now though. For example, I have become used to flipping switches up for off and down for on, I know the correct temperature in Celsius to set the a/c to. I can say a few words in Arabic, including (and most importantly ‘thank you’) and I have a lot more to do than I did when I first arrived.
I am hoping we don’t have to stay here too long, but I am very happy to be back. One thing that Abu Dhabi really has no lack of is good customer service, and this particular hotel is a stellar example of how customer service can trump many other factors when people are considering your product versus others.
Yep! That’s how it is.