Fujairah Roundabout Art

Posted by Kanga.

The streets of Fujairah are a web connecting many a roundabout. Several of the roundabouts have art depicting traditional symbols.

The Perfume Roundabout may be the oldest current roundabout structure. It was recently refurbished. It has a water feature (not running at the time of picture). Water flows from the bottle.

Another of the older art is the Incense Burner.

The Arabic Coffee Pot also has a water feature. Water pours out filling the same cup to overflowing.

The fish of the Fish Roundabout spit water. All the water features happened to be turned off on the day we spent taking pictures. The building in the background is a new mammoth beachside hotel currently under construction.

Iconic and a bit scary is the Falcon Roundabout. It provides a bit of shade and a good photo op.

Not all of the roundabouts have art. This one is always populated by a flock of pigeons in the afternoon, so it is the Pigeon Roundabout.

Two new sculptures have been installed since we moved to Fujairah. This is the Sword Roundabout symbolizing the sword handling competitions.

Newest is this Boat Roundabout. We’ve seen it both lit up blue at night and a water feature that forms the sail. (The building on the left is our apartment building.)

Last, and maybe least, is what we like to call the Surveillance Roundabout. In the center of this roundabout is a surveillance camera pointed down a road that borders the palace.

Silly roundabouts

Here are two of my favorite silly roundabouts. In this first clip we have just turned into the Outlet Mall. We can’t turn into the parking area until after we have gone around a dead end roundabout. It was very windy that day, which is why I started recording. This is the day when we saw someone washing a car in this parking lot in this wind.

This next clip is a slip road that connects two major roadways. We take this route often. We can’t just merge onto the road at the left where we want to go. We have to first turn right, go around a roundabout, then back the way we came to where we can finally merge onto the road. The “soundtrack,” if you will, is coming from the car radio. We usually listen to an Emirati station even though we don’t understand a word (yet). This snippet seems to be the call to prayer.

Fujairah

Fujairah has several roundabouts with large public art. Above, the large coffee pot and cups, below a hand holding a perfume bottle (?).

Along the beach were some rather Flintstone style trees and matching trash cans.

This is Paul and our new friend Zeyah standing on the beach. Below you can see that the water was so still and the sky so hazy that it is nearly impossible to see where the horizon is.
I fully intended to dip my toes in the Gulf of Oman, but the overwhelming bad fish smell put me off. The sand here was actual sand, not broken shells. It was very dark sand and it made the water dark, too, which made it even more uninviting.