You Got the Job in Abu Dhabi. Now What? A First Weekend Guide for New Expats

The offer letter came through. The visa was stamped. You landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport with two bags and a vague sense of where your accommodation was. The first week was orientation meetings, bank account paperwork, and learning which supermarket is closest to your building.

Then Friday arrives. The city is yours and you have no idea where to start.

Most new expats in Abu Dhabi spend their first few weekends either stuck in the apartment or doing the things they read about before they arrived: the Grand Mosque, the Corniche, the mall. Those are fine starting points. But Abu Dhabi rewards a slightly more deliberate approach, particularly for someone who is going to be living here rather than passing through. Here is how to use your first weekends in a way that actually helps you understand the city you have just moved to.

Alt text: “Abu Dhabi Corniche waterfront at early morning, a popular destination for new expats on their first weekend in the city”

Friday Morning: Get Outside Before 10am

This applies year-round but it matters most between April and October when the temperature climbs past 35 degrees by mid-morning and outdoor activity becomes genuinely unpleasant. New expats frequently underestimate Abu Dhabi’s heat in the first few weeks. The walk from your car to the office is air-conditioned. The rest is not.

The Corniche is the obvious Friday morning destination and it earns the reputation. Eight kilometres of waterfront promenade, mostly shaded in the early hours, with a cycling lane, a beach strip, and a view of the city skyline across the water. At 7am on a Friday it is quiet in a way that it never is during the week, and that quiet is one of the better introductions to what Abu Dhabi actually feels like as a city rather than as a workplace.

Al Bateen beach, slightly further along the waterfront from the main Corniche strip, is less visited and more local in character. Families set up early. The water is calm. It is the kind of place that takes about four visits before you start to feel like you belong there, which is a reasonable goal for a first weekend.

What to Actually See in the First Month

Alt text: “Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Abu Dhabi exterior with white marble domes and minarets, one of the largest mosques in the world”

The standard advice for new Abu Dhabi expats is to visit the Grand Mosque as soon as possible. This is correct advice. Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is one of the genuinely extraordinary buildings in the world, and seeing it before you have heard every colleague describe it is considerably better than the alternative. Friday morning visits require checking the prayer schedule. The mosque closes between roughly 11:30am and 1:30pm. Early visits before 9am are quieter than anything you will experience on a weekend afternoon.

Qasr Al Watan, the Presidential Palace that opened to visitors in 2019, is the place most new expats take too long to get to. It tends to get deprioritised in favour of things that feel more immediately tourist-facing. This is a mistake. The building is architecturally significant in ways that take some time to absorb, and the permanent exhibition on UAE governance and history provides context for the city you are now working in that a guidebook does not.

Saadiyat Island is worth a separate trip. The Louvre Abu Dhabi alone justifies the drive, and the beach clubs on the island are some of the better weekend infrastructure the city offers.

Getting Out of the City

The Desert

Alt text: “Private morning desert safari Abu Dhabi showing golden sand dunes at sunrise with a 4×4 vehicle, ideal for new expats”

Most new expats visit a desert safari within the first month, usually through a group booking arranged by a colleague or a hotel concierge. These experiences vary considerably in quality. The shared evening safari format, which is what most aggregator platforms sell by default, puts 30 people in a convoy of vehicles for a few hours and returns them to a camp for a buffet dinner. It is entertaining but it is not what people mean when they talk about the desert as a place.

For a first desert experience that gives you a sense of the landscape rather than a performance of it, private morning safaris are worth knowing about. Arabiers Holidays is a licensed Abu Dhabi travel agency that runs private desert experiences with their own vehicles and guides, including early morning departures that get you into the dunes before the heat arrives and back in the city by mid-morning. For a new expat who wants to understand what the Abu Dhabi desert actually looks and feels like rather than what a packaged evening experience delivers, that format is worth the difference in price.

Al Ain

Alt text: “Al Ain Oasis UAE with traditional falaj irrigation channels and ancient date palms, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular day trip from Abu Dhabi”

Al Ain is an hour and a half east of Abu Dhabi city along the E22, and it is the place most expats are surprised by when they eventually get there. The city has a completely different character to Abu Dhabi: lower buildings, older streets, an oasis at its centre that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in Arabia. Jebel Hafeet, the mountain that rises above the city near the Oman border, has a road to the summit that is one of the better drives in the UAE. The view from the top covers three countries on a clear day.

Al Ain is a Friday day trip that most Abu Dhabi expats do once and then wonder why they waited so long. Go in the cooler months if possible. The oasis at 8am in January is as good as the UAE gets.

Practical Things That Take New Expats by Surprise

The weekend in Abu Dhabi is Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday. This catches new arrivals from Western countries in the first week and continues to cause mild scheduling confusion for considerably longer. Business hours on Thursday evenings are often extended. Sunday is a working day.

Traffic on the E11 between Abu Dhabi and Dubai is heaviest on Thursday evenings and Sunday evenings. If you are planning weekend trips to Dubai, Friday and Saturday are significantly more comfortable travel days than the transitions into and out of the weekend.

The city is considerably more spread out than it appears on a map. The distance between the Corniche and Khalidiyah is walkable. The distance between the Corniche and Yas Island is not, despite both appearing within the Abu Dhabi boundary. Rideshare apps are reliable and inexpensive by the standards of most cities where expats come from. Use them freely in the first few months while you are working out where things are.

Dress modestly in heritage sites and anywhere that is not a beach, hotel pool, or mall. The standard guidance of covered shoulders and knees applies at the Grand Mosque, Qasr Al Watan, and most traditional areas of the city. The requirement is enforced politely but it is a requirement.

The Slower Adjustment

The practical orientation to Abu Dhabi happens quickly. The slower adjustment is to the pace of the city itself, which is different from what most new expats are used to. Abu Dhabi does not operate at Dubai’s speed. It is quieter, more deliberate, and considerably less interested in being impressive to people who are visiting. As a place to work and live rather than to pass through, that quality becomes an asset over time.

Most long-term Abu Dhabi expats, when asked what they wish they had known in their first month, say some version of the same thing: that they wish they had spent less time in the apartment waiting to feel settled and more time outside letting the city become familiar. The familiarity does come. The Corniche at 7am stops being a tourist experience and starts being where you go when you need to think. Al Ain stops being a day trip and starts being a Sunday habit.

That transition takes a few months. The first weekend is where it starts.