Talking Abu Dhabi the emirate, now. The big city has the same name as the emirate, but the emirate has one other major population center … and that is Al Ain.

Al Ain is perhaps best known, in the region, as the home of the UAE’s most decorated soccer team. Eleven league championships, one Asian Champions League title, for Al Ain FC.

Inside the country, Al Ain conjures more specific thought balloons.

–It is one of the coolest places in the country during the six months of summer, perhaps because it has a teeny bit of altitude (nearly 1,000 feet!) but also because it is not as soggy as the rest of the UAE’s major cities, which hug the seacoast. Al Ain is about 100 miles inland.

–It is the city with the greatest concentration of Emiratis, UAE citizens. With a population of 520,000, Al Ain is about half the size of Abu Dhabi (the city) and about a quarter the size of Dubai, in the neighboring sheikhdom, but more Emiratis live in Al Ain than in either of those two big cities.

It also is the biggest city in the country you have to make a point of going to. It isn’t really on the way to anything, aside from the road to Muscat, the capital of Oman, which is on the Indian Ocean. The other big cities in the country are pretty much all lined up on the Gulf coast, from Abu Dhabi in the south to Ras Al Khaimah in the north. You go to RAK, and you pass through Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman …

One of us had never been to Al Ain. And today we decided to make the drive and look at the place like tourists.

The road to Al Ain brings to mind something in California’s Coachella Valley. Maybe near Indio. But with less sand.

Most of the drive is over what the Britons call “waste” — just compacted sand really (not dunes), with little or no organic matter in it. A few farms are near the six-lane freeway, but agriculture here depends on soil from outside the area. A lot of the rest of it is animal-based — camels for riding, admiring, occasionally eating or milking, eggs and chickens and milk cows. (Al Ain-brand dairy products are big in Abu Dhabi.)

Al Ain also has several oases. (Al Ain spring water also is a major brand.) Water is why the place exists, and Al Ain was an important place when Abu Dhabi was a sad little port/fishing village — all of 50 years ago.

People have been living around those oases for a very long time, and occasionally fighting over them, water being beyond precious — pre-desalination plants.

The current UAE president, Sheikh Khalifa, was born in Al Ain, as was his father, Sheikh Zayed, usually denominated as the “father of the country”. Yes, he had 19 sons, so father of the country could be somewhat literal, but uniting the little sheikhdoms of the coast was his idea, and certainly his creation. Hence, the United Arab Emirates.

So, Al Ain. Unlike Dubai (especially) and Abu Dhabi, Al Ain is a horizontal city. And very spread out. Think of the Los Angeles basin before the spots between cities were filled in.

You reach the outskirts of the place, where the speed limit drops from 140kph (87mph) to 80kph (50mph), and you think “we’re here!” but you have most of another half hour to get to the center of the city, which is pretty much right up on the Oman border.

The first observation to make is … those are some big houses, wide and sprawling and 2-3 stories tall. They can be seen from the roads because Emiratis like to live alongside roads. Perhaps so they can more quickly get where they want to go. The big houses go on for miles, both sides of the roads, with an occasional palace thrown in.

The second is, it’s bucolic. And very green. Which is why Al Ain is sometimes known as the Garden City. My passenger decided she liked it. “Everything seems planted. Neater. No open dirt.”

We took a detour for a wonky reason: To see the new football stadium, Shiekh Hazza bin Zayed Stadium, where Al Ain FC plays.

It has been almost a year that Al Ain FC moved in, and over a space of seven days straddling this weekend two German clubs and English champions Manchester City will be playing there, as well as an understrength Al Ain — which has eight players at the Asian Cup, in Australia, and a ninth, Asamoah Gyan, at the African Cup of Nations in Cape Verde. Al Ain FC will see what it can do against Eintracht Frankfurt on Sunday, and Manchester City plays Hamburg next Wednesday in a game that sell out the place.

The stadium, capacity 25,000 and the nicest in the country, was closed, but it is interesting from the outside. The odd exterior is supposed to bring to mind palm trees.

We headed south from there to the Al Ain Zoo, biggest in the country. We half expected a “sad” zoo, but it is tidy, fairly big and a fine family destination. Kids can run around and no one cares, and they perhaps will stop to take a look at the lion in the enclosed Cat House, or the oryxes or any of the other 66 enclosures, which skew towards regional creatures — and that doesn’t count the numerous snakes and turtles in the reptile house.

It costs only 20 dirhams to get in, or about $5.40, and even the expat laborers making the least amount of money can afford to drop by, now and then, and buy an ice cream and sit in the shade.

Lots and lots of families. Three generations, often. And also more than a few Omanis, who we rarely see in Abu Dhabi. Omanis can be picked out by their head gear, which is more colorful and hat-like than the Emirati gutra.

The zoo welcomes picnickers, and has a greensward meant for that purpose and, as we left, lots of families were streaming in carrying big baskets.

It is a fun, upbeat place. And in mid-January, the climate is pleasant, too, at about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Back to the car, and further south to the patch of ground Al Ain is best known for — Jebel Hafeet. (Hafeet Mountain.)

It is random batch of moonscape-y rock, south of the city, running north to south, thrust into the sky by ancient tectonic activity. The “range” is about nine miles long but only about 2.5 miles wide, which perhaps explains why the road to the top (or nearly so) is particularly steep.

The drive is 14 kilometers, from the base of the mountain to the Top of Jebel Hafeet cafeteria, near the peak and just past the Mercure Hotel — and the batch of big homes perched on the rocks (behind me, in the photo above) with views over Al Ain and back towards the west, which probably is spectacular when the air is clean.

(Some photos here, taken on clear days.)

We were not entirely sure the 2004 Audi could make the climb, but it did, and at the top we found a curious collection of people. A few Emiratis, a few Westerners, but the majority of people appeared to be Pakistanis or Afghans, perhaps those from the mountainous north who just like being able to look down from some heights.

A few people were flying tiny kites, a few were inside getting a drink at the resto/cafeteria and, at more than 4,000 feet, it definitely was cooler than down on the flat. Crisp, almost.

One of the explainer signs at the big parking lot near the top claimed the mountain road was rated “one of the world’s 10 best mountain drives” — presumably because of the steepness, which was kinda creepy on the way down. Lots of sharp turns, steep declines and sheer cliffs. And bare rock. All the way. Just plain rock, weathered by thousands of years of wind and occasional rain.

Next came the stop at the Adnoc gas station, on the flat. All Adnoc refueling sites have food outlets, most of them U.S.-based fast-food chains (McDonalds, Burger King, KFC) but the one we were at had a place called Sea Shell — one of the subcontinent-inspired places which sell 30 kinds of juices and 40 kinds of sandwiches and burgers. We picked up the “chicken snack meal” and a mixed juice for about $6.

With the sun lowering in the west, and directly in the eyes of drivers going that direction, we decided to drive east, before sunset, and into downtown, which is barely a mile from the border and the Omani city of Buraimi on the other side of passport control.

Downtown is a place of four-story buildings, which was the maximum allowed in the city until recently. It is a place of small businesses and a few big ones (banks); the handful of hotels taller than four stories are a bit away from the city center, which appears to have almost no women in it.

My passenger liked it. “It’s cute!” It certainly feels like an expression of what Emiratis, the citizens, think makes for a good city — as opposed to the vertical towers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where Emiratis can be thin on the ground, among all the foreigners.

Al Ain seems calmer, drier, slower, more welcoming for families, more accessible, perhaps friendlier, too, at least on a “how-dya-do” basis. (I would guess it would take a Westerner quite some time to penetrate Emirati society at any significant level.)

Taken in the context of the region, which has seen so many wars and social upheaval, it is a safe place, orderly, well-kempt, and all the bad stuff may not be that far away, as the jet fighter flies, but in Al Ain it seems on the other side of the world.

Basically, it is the ‘burbs, and considered the best place to raise a family, certainly in Abu Dhabi emirate.

The zoo and that curious thing called a mountain, and the new soccer stadium (and the waterpark we didn’t visit, and the theme park and the race track) seem to make it a place worth visiting, and an easy one-day road trip from the hectic and often impersonal big cities of the UAE.