Three days in Abu Dhabi: the quiet emirate with the better mosque and the better museum

Begin at Qasr al-Hosn, which is the oldest stone building in Abu Dhabi and the reason there is a city here at all. A watchtower went up on this spot in the 1760s to guard a freshwater well found on the island, the fort grew around it, and it was the ruling family's home and seat of government until 1966. Everything else you will see this weekend was built after that. It reopened as a museum in 2018 after a very long restoration, and the exhibition inside covers pearl diving, the desert economy and the extraordinarily abrupt change that oil brought, which is the useful context for the rest of the trip.

In the late afternoon go to the Corniche. It runs about eight kilometres along the north-west shore, with a cycle track, public beaches, shaded lawns and the whole skyline behind it, and in winter it is where the city goes after work. Walk a stretch of it westward towards the breakwater, where the flagpole stands at 122 metres with a UAE flag the size of a tennis court on it, and the view back across the water takes in the towers, the islands and the sunset.

Eat at the fish market on the western end. You choose from the ice, decide how you want it done, and a kitchen next door grills or fries it while you wait. It is one of the least glamorous and most enjoyable meals in the Gulf.

Be at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque when it opens. It was completed in 2007, it carries 82 domes and something over a thousand columns, it is finished in white Macedonian marble inlaid with flowers in coloured stone, and it holds tens of thousands of worshippers. The prayer hall has a single hand-knotted Iranian carpet that took two years and hundreds of weavers to make, and chandeliers of gilded brass and crystal that are hard to look at directly. Sheikh Zayed, who ruled from the founding of the country until 2004 and is the reason this city exists in its present form, is buried in the courtyard next door. Entry is free, the dress code is strict, and it is worth going twice: once now and once after dark, when the marble is lit blue and white.

Ten minutes away is Qasr Al Watan, which is a functioning presidential palace that decided in 2019 to sell tickets. This is not a former palace or a replica: state visits happen here. What you see is the ceremonial half, and it is unapologetically opulent, with a Great Hall under a dome of 37 metres, a library of rare manuscripts, and gifts of state laid out in cases. Take the audio guide. There is a light show on the facade in the evening.

Finish on Saadiyat Island at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2017 and is the best building in the country. Jean Nouvel put a dome 180 metres across over a cluster of low white galleries, made of eight layers of perforated steel, and the effect underneath is what he calls a rain of light: thousands of shifting points of sun on the walls, the water and you. The collection is arranged by period rather than by civilisation, so a Chinese bronze, a Levantine idol and a Greek head share a room and argue with each other. It is a small collection by European standards and a far better hour than a bigger one would be.

Spend the last morning somewhere genuinely odd. The Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital, out towards the airport, is a working veterinary clinic that treats several thousand birds a year, and it runs a two hour tour that has to be booked in advance. You watch a bird being anaesthetised for a feather repair or a talon trim, you see the free-flight aviary, and at the end you sit in a room with a falcon on your gloved arm while somebody explains why a country this modern still organises a large part of its social life around them.

It is not a zoo and it does not feel like one. Falconry in the Gulf is a genuine, expensive, continuing obsession, the birds travel on aircraft with their own passports, and an hour here explains more about Emirati culture than a museum can.

The airport is fifteen minutes further on, which makes this the natural last stop before an afternoon flight. If you are heading back to Dubai instead, the coach takes two hours and leaves every twenty minutes from the main bus station.