There's always a risk, when attempting to coordinate the end of a job and travel arrangements, that things don't flow as seamlessly as you'd like. There's been the odd occasion in the past when, with the end of the cable in sight, the work has for one reason or another, stopped for 24 hours, throwing everyone's schedules out of the window.

Happily, on this job, it all went according to plan and even afforded us a day extra to explore, though unhappily for me, museums and galleries were closed on Mondays. I awarded myself a double crème-caramel avec chocolate yummy bit, and strawberry ice-cream as both consolation for the latter and in celebration of an almost trouble-free three weeks.

From my 'office' on the deck of the Isaac Newton, I could see both Abu Dhabi's 'Louvre' and the ongoing construction of the new Guggenheim Museum. I was determined to get to the Louvre if the slightest chance made itself available. It did! We finished after lunch on Sunday and after a shower and change of clothes, I set out to the port gate, some quarter of a mile away. Outside the gate, I tried for half an hour to get a signal on the Uber app, but to no avail. I went back to the ship before I melted into the pavement. Up on the bridge, I explained the problem. The consensus was that my iPhone 6S (made before most of the crew were born and a prompt for some good-natured ribbing) was at the root. Coincidentally, Kane, my fellow magneteer, had been extolling the virtues of his ES 2022 and, with my noticing that some quite handy apps - eSim for instance - wouldn't work on anything pre-iPhone 11, I had privately resolved to bite the bullet and get with the programme. If I return to Abu Dhabi later on in the year, maybe my luck will change and I'll get to the Louvre; the Guggenheim might even be finished by then.

The early morning trip back to the airport went through downtown Abu Dhabi. Despite the rain we'd had, it hadn't taken long for any trace of the recent flooding to disappear. We didn't get it quite as bad as Dubai - only an hour up the road - but it was amusing to reflect that we had been best placed for the drama by being aboard a ship. Abu Dhabi is very clean and, according to our Indian taxi driver, "number one city for security." He'd lived there with his family for forty years and was very happy.

Being based not on the ship, but in a downtown hotel, our works manager was able to take a bus tour of the city and record his visit to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque - the biggest of its kind in the UAE.

The building complex alone occupies thirty acres and is clad in marble from top to toe.

The computer chip board skyline was silhouetted against a rising sun as we sped towards the airport...

... itself another inspired piece of architecture. Inside, it was immaculate and, although still picking up the slack from the delays and cancellations in Dubai, not particularly busy.

Our trip out to Abu Dhabi with Etihad Airways, one of the two flag carriers for the United Arab Emirates, was on a new Airbus A380. Our return was on a British Airways 787-9 Dreamliner,. The entertainment system was old, clunky, and clearly inaccurate by comparison. Watching the latest 'Mission Impossible', we were interested to note that not half an hour ago, we'd been standing in the airport exactly where the film's opening sequence had been shot.

I got home to a leaking radiator tap. Thinking about it, I wondered why, when I have a ½" tap at the bottom of the block, I need one there at all.