Another Excellent Adventure

Despite having intentions to have a wee shop at Dubai airport, it was way to early to deal with the crazy crowds on the retail level of the terminal. Instead, we headed to the Moet and Chandon lounge to enjoy some cool, some fab and some relative calm. The Emirates lounge area pretty much takes the whole first floor of the terminal, with a range of differen areas and cuisine buffets. It's pretty mind-blowing. The flight was lovely too, cant beat the extra legroom! but this trip to Venice has been a bit fraught. Sadly Gaynor got sick during the week so hasn't been able to join us, the opera was cancelled due to strike action, there was a transport hiccup that meant it took me and Brett an hour and a half to transfer from the airport, and Brett has come down with a head cold. All in all, not the visit we had imagined. However, at the end of the day, we are in Venice. And its only 31 degrees, which is positively balmy after Dubai! After a wander, despite our best intentions...

After getting a good night sleep to shake off some of the jetlag, we had a quick breakast at the hotel and then headed off on our scheduled city tour of Dubai. Actually, the hotel breakfast deserves a special mention - the food was so good, I think I could have just stayed in the restaurant for the rest of the day. But, we were all interested in doing some exploring so we prepared or another day in the heat and waited or our pickup. Things got a little uncertain when the tour guide didn't turn up on time and we thought that a last minute plan-B might be needed. But, the bus eventually turned up and off we went.... The pace of development in Dubai really is extrordinary - the Palm islands (the man-made set of islands that houses over thirty hotels) took only six years to build. There's actually been a runway built over the top of the water just for planes to take skydivers up. Talk about extravagant! And, of course there's the famous Burj Al Ararb - the most prestigous hote...

We arrived into Dubai at 5am-ish and it was already 33 degrees!  After checking into the hotel, we went straight to breakfast - although we couldn’t really manage much of it because they had pretty much continuously fed us on the plane.  To get a bit of exercise in, after being sedentary for so long, we then went for a stroll through the Mall of the Emirates which the hotel is attached to.  It is not the biggest - but still the size of a small town!  Three floors of retail everything you could possibly look for.  However, the shops weren’t open so we were able to just wander - unhindered by the constant cries for your attention that come when everything's open.  Honestly, the spruikers are pretty exhausting - they are in the high end malls as well as the markets and are pretty insistent.  Polite refusals just don’t have any effect.  The Tonies realised that the shops they were looking for are actually in Dubai Mall, so they headed off there, while...

Well, we can defo say that business class is a whole new ball game when it comes to long distance flying. We got a chauffeur pick up in a lovely Mercedes van, speedy checkin, lounge waiting - all before we even got on board!  Then, there was a toiletries travel pack (different men’s and women’s versions), slippers and pjs.  And the food! No powdered egg here folks!  It was a pretty cool experience having a bar to hang out at.  The crew were really attentive - and heaps of them - and really encouraged us to make the most of everything. Of course the icing on the cake was the ability to lie flat (although I was misinformed by Brett that it didn’t go all the way flat, so I had some “OK’ semi-flat hours before I discovered he was wrong - it’s a new experience for both of us, so he was readily forgiven but heads up for anyone in the future, you have to go all the way forward before you can go all the way flat).  All in all, there may be bigger gaps between holidays n...