Abu Dhabi, from the Corniche to Saadiyat

Five. The five-star hotels we list in Abu Dhabi are Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, Abu Dhabi; Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island; The St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi; The St. Regis Abu Dhabi; and Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers. Alongside them we keep six four-star addresses, each listed at exactly the tier it holds: Rosewood Abu Dhabi; Jumeirah Saadiyat Island; Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi Hotel and Villas; Shangri-La, Qaryat Al Beri, Abu Dhabi; Fairmont Bab Al Bahr; and The Abu Dhabi EDITION. Each has its own page, reached from the list above, with a concierge behind every stay.

Six of the eleven are on the Corniche and Al Maryah Island – Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, Abu Dhabi on its own beach at the western end of the Corniche, with Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers in the towers next door and The Abu Dhabi EDITION on the Al Bateen marina behind them; The St. Regis Abu Dhabi in Nation Towers, midway along the promenade; Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island and Rosewood Abu Dhabi on the waterfront of the financial island, beside The Galleria. Three are on Saadiyat Island – The St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi, Jumeirah Saadiyat Island and Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi Hotel and Villas along the beach, a few minutes from the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Two are on the Khor Al Maqta channel – Shangri-La, Qaryat Al Beri, Abu Dhabi and Fairmont Bab Al Bahr, facing the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque across the water. Choose the Corniche for the city – the promenade, Qasr Al Watan, the Founder's Memorial and the restaurants of Al Maryah Island at the door, with a hotel beach at the western end; Saadiyat for a resort on open sand, the turtles and the museums, with the city twenty minutes away; the Maqta channel for the mosque in the window, a quiet address in between, fifteen minutes from the airport and about as far from Yas Island.

The winter – from October to April – is the season: days in the twenties, evenings cool enough for the Corniche, a sea warm enough to swim in off Saadiyat and every beach club and terrace open. The weekend of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit, at the end of November or the start of December, takes the rooms of the whole city months ahead – Saadiyat and the Corniche included – and the weeks from mid-December through the New Year and on into the golf and the tennis of January and February fill next; Abu Dhabi Art brings the galleries to Manarat Al Saadiyat in November. From June to September the heat is the fact of the day – afternoons past forty degrees, a humid shore, life indoors and in chilled pools – and the resorts are at their quietest; May and October are the shoulders, hot but usable, with the sea at its best. Rain is rare and brief, and falls mostly between December and March. Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year – see the next question.

Less than it once did. Ramadan follows the lunar calendar and moves about eleven days earlier each year, so the dates are known well ahead. The hotels' restaurants, bars and pools keep their hours and serve through the day, and most restaurants in the city now do the same, a little more discreetly; live music pauses and the beach clubs turn the volume down. Eating, drinking or smoking in the street in daylight is a courtesy to avoid, and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque shortens its visiting hours for the month. In return there is iftar, the meal at sunset, laid out in the hotels' tents and majlis – and on the terraces that face the mosque across the Maqta channel – with a generosity the rest of the year does not match, and the malls stay open late into the night. Eid al-Fitr, the holiday at the end of the month, fills the Saadiyat resorts with families from across the Gulf. Beyond Ramadan the customs are simple: modest dress in the malls, at the mosque and in the old quarters – shoulders and knees covered, with suitable dress lent at the mosque to anyone without it – and swimwear kept to the beach and the pool.

One of the best in the Gulf, and Yas Island is the reason: Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, Yas Waterworld, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi and SeaWorld Yas Island sit side by side about fifteen minutes from Saadiyat and half an hour from the Corniche, with Yas Marina and its promenade beside them. On Saadiyat the beach is long, shallow and calm, the resorts keep kids' clubs, and the hawksbill turtles nest in the sand between spring and summer, with the nests fenced and the lights turned down; the Louvre Abu Dhabi has a children's museum of its own. On the Corniche the public beach and the cycle path run the length of the promenade, Qasr Al Watan opens its halls beside Emirates Palace, and the mangroves at the eastern end of the island are a morning by kayak. The Grand Mosque is an outing for any age. Distances are short by car, the malls are the answer to the heat in the middle of the day, and a babysitter for an evening out is a call to the hotel.

No, though almost everything is a ride. Abu Dhabi is a city of islands and distances – the Corniche to Saadiyat is about twenty minutes by car, to Yas Island about thirty, to the Grand Mosque and the Maqta channel about twenty – and within each quarter the hotels put what matters at the door: the promenade, the beach and the restaurants of Al Maryah Island from the Corniche, the sand and the Louvre from Saadiyat, the mosque from the Maqta channel. Taxis are everywhere and metered, ride apps work, and there is no metro; a driver by the hour is easy to book. Zayed International Airport is about twenty minutes from Saadiyat and from the Maqta hotels, and thirty from the Corniche. Every hotel here runs its own airport cars. Dubai is an hour and a quarter up the coast on the E11; Al Ain, the oasis city at the foot of Jebel Hafeet, about an hour and a half inland; the dunes of Liwa and the Empty Quarter, two to three hours to the south-west, a long day or a night away.

Search your dates on the hotel's page to see reference rates, then send the concierge a request. The concierge confirms exact rates and availability with you before anything is booked, and any payment and its timing are set out before you confirm.