The old port at Mina Zayed is the part of Abu Dhabi that still feels like a working Gulf city. The fish market opens before dawn and is busiest from five to seven in the morning, when restaurant buyers and home cooks pick through tuna, kingfish, hammour, prawns, and crabs straight off the dhows.
Adjacent are the Iranian souk, where Persian rugs are stacked from floor to ceiling and the bargaining is theatrical, and the date market with twenty varieties piled in pyramids. The area is being slowly redeveloped; come now before that happens.