AL AIN // The first destination that the 28 children on the Journey of the Union visited was the Al Ain Palace Museum.
This was the palace of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and was built in 1910.
The palace has many courtyards, each for specific purposes such as rooms for guests, children’s housing, meeting rooms, or majlis, for the local and foreign visitors to the palace.
Sultan bin Ahmed Al Kuwaiti, representing the museum, spoke to the group about the importance of various sites. He showed the young people the majlis where people would come to meet Sheikh Zayed and talked to them about the heritage value of the spot
The children were informed about the activities that would take place in the house when the royal family lived there.
Sahem Al Zarouni, who works at the museum, spoke to them about the value of the place and informed them about the royal family tree.
The children said that although earlier they did not know they would be visiting the former house of Sheikh Zayed, they were thrilled to learn anecdotes of his life and facts about the palace to take home.
The next destination on the journey of the union was the Al Ain Oasis. The teenagers walked through the oasis taking pictures of things that interested them and asked questions about them. Many commented that this was the first time they had visited an oasis. They enjoyed the weather and walked through the tree-lined lanes.
Al Ain owes its name to the oasis, which has supposedly been cultivated for several thousand years. The 3,000-acre site contains more than 147,000 date palms and other fruit-bearing trees such as mangoes, oranges, bananas and figs. The area is divided into grids and the orchard is irrigated through aflaj, a system of water channels.
The date orchards form a patchwork of individually owned plots, segregated by a maze of pathways varying from one to seven metres in width. The oasis has been preserved in a way that was intended to highlight the country’s culture.
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