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Weekend activities

1st November 2008 by Helena 3 Comments  

What do you thing your average Abu Dhabian does of a weekend? A spot of swimming in the warm sea? A trip to the desert? Some camel racing perhaps? No, we go to Carrefour.

Olivier MartinezFor reasons too tedious to explain, I have been to two Carrefours today and you would have thought they had announced that you got a year’s free groceries judging by the queues. Or that every litre of milk came with a kiss from Carla Bruni for the blokes and one from Olivier Martinez for the girls.

Sadly none of the above was true. We just all happened to be there at the same time. Luckily the children and I had begun the day with a little more culture. We went to perhaps the only other building here that is bigger than Carrefour; the Grand Mosque. 

The Grand Mosque

I was asked to put on an abya and a scarf before I went in and found it a rather interesting experience. It wasn’t hot or uncomfortable as I imagined it would be. I felt rather elegant sweeping through the vast rooms with my children in tow. Olivia and Bea, never one to miss an opportunity to dress up, donned scarves as well. If I could only get the photo from my phone to the computer I could show you. Leo acted as photographer and did a great job.

The Grand Mosque opened earlier this year and is the final resting place of Sheikh Zayed, the Father of the Nation, to whom it is dedicated. A friend told me today that there are several people employed to read The Koran out loud to his remains at four-hour stretches each. The building covers an area of 22,000 square metres (who does the hoovering is what I want to know) and the building is entirely clad in marble.

It is big enough for 30,000 worshippers, assuming they can tear themselves away from Carrefour that is.

 Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008


Filed Under: Abu Dhabi, Fashion, blog --> Tagged With: activities, weekend

3 thoughts on Weekend activities

  • jose says:
    3rd November 2008 at 11:42 am

    The Grand Mosque must be a haven – empty space and quiet compared to dreary Carrefour with all those endless shelves stacked up to the sky. They’re pulling out of Italy as the customers aren’t so in love with them here as they used to be (recession? competition?) so expect to find more of the same
    in Dubai. Talk about Mecca, everyone’s flocking there with good reason

  • xOx says:
    22nd November 2008 at 4:48 pm

    What do you thing your average Abu Dhabian does of a weekend? A spot of swimming in the warm sea? A trip to the desert? Some camel racing perhaps? No, we go to Carrefour.

    talk about your self i am a local girl and i never went to carrefour lol especially on weekends!
    i have a life you know haha =P

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    28th March 2010 at 5:11 pm

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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