The Desert Diva Sharjah is famous for its museums – it has 16 in total; we have been talking about visiting some for years, so earlier this month we took a three day break in the Emirate to visit as many as we could.
The traffic in Sharjah is horrendous and compared to Al Ain it takes five times as long to get anywhere, so we started our touring at the nearest attraction to our hotel – the lovely Sharjah Premiere.
It will come as no surprise that you will find the Maritime Museum down at the sea, in Al Khan area. It is on the same site as the Sharjah Aquarium and combined tickets are on sale for the very reasonable price of 20AED per adult.
The museum traces the maritime history of this area, from boatbuilding and fishing through to pearls which were one of the main exports of this area until the 1930s. It was very quiet during our midweek visit and we sauntered slowly round the main exhibits absorbing as much as we could.
The Sharjah Aquarium is only 2 minutes walk away; we had seen reviews which said there was not much to it, but since we are more used to visiting the small but wonderful Macduff Marine Aquarium, then we thought it quite large and definitely worth an hour or two of our time.
After our tour we had a snack in the very good cafe, browsed round the shop then headed back to our hotel for a supper of – what else but – fish and chips!
Opening hours
8am to 8pm Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
4pm to 10pm Friday
CLOSED SUNDAYS
Location – N25 19.877 E55 21.540