Dubai 2010 – Day 0 & Day 1

Our trip to Dubai started at four a.m. by driving my in-laws to the Linköping Airport for their trip back to Canada. What we realized when we woke up was that it had snowed between five to ten cm during the night and that meant snow shoveling. Unfortunely the communal snow plowers had no time to shovel the road so the first part of the trip was slightly interesting. Snow everywhere and more snow coming…

After dropping the in-laws at the airport with time to spare, we set of home. An interesting trip back since we’d been gone, there had been about a increase of two to four cm of snow… Back home we packed the last of the stuff in our suitcase and ate breakfast with my brother-in-law. Then we all got into the car and headed for Norrköping to drop him off at the train station.

Making good time we set of towards Stockholm to pick up my little brother as well as pick up the last stuff in the house. Realizing that the snow kept falling and at any time that chaos could start, we tried to make the stop as short as possible.

We set of towards Arlanda Airport (north of Stockholm) and sure enough the snow kept falling but  it all went well and all of our extra time wasn’t needed at all.

At Arlanda we realized that the snow fall was much worse than we actually realized since about five flights to London, Amsterdam, Zurich and Frankfurt had been cancelled. And lots of delays were starting to appear on the flight board… The airport was jammed-packed with travelers, some happy some disappointed, but I have never seen that many people there before… It was slightly insane. But our trip seemed to be OK – so far so good.

We checked in our three large luggage, with about 400 g to spare =) and went through security and sat down at a café to have lunch before our flight would take off. When we had started to eat on our giant shrimp and sandwich / Räklandgång we noticed that our flight had been delayed by 20 minutes. Not too bad, since the weather was the way it was…

Then the second delay came and then the third delay and then all of a sudden the flight was delayed until 17.10, an hour and fifteen minutes. So it was time for a coffee and some more reading. And by this time I was really bored. We hoped that we would reach our connecting flight and when we checked, they had delayed the connecting flight with a couple of hours – so that was good for us.

At around 17.30 we finally took off towards Kiev, with AeroSvit and the trip was your basic flight, although we had massive amounts of leg room – which was nice. We were served sandwiches with salami and cheese and to be quite honest they were fine. Much better than regular airplane food.

In Kiev, we were transported via buss to the terminal and, the 30 some passengers traveling to Dubai were caught by airport staff and brought through security and then out to the waiting plane. It took us maybe 20 minutes and we were off again.

The flight to Dubai was much worse. The leg room was better for me, since I was sitting at the exit, but next too me was a really unpleasant man that made me angry and brought me to tears. Andy and Tim sat in different rows but after some time and the unpleasant man moved, Andy came and sat with me. I also made a new friend named Ali, who was really nice and made me feel like a person after the unpleasant man had made me cry. Also other passengers on the plane were really nice – it felt good to know that there are some really nice people in the world. Andy and I sat together and I calmed down enough to be able to sleep for maybe an hour.

It was actually really good that the flight was delayed to Dubai, since it meant that my Dad, who came to pick us up, didn’t have to get up at two a.m. but instead five a.m. Passport control and baggage collection went swiftly and of we went to meet my Dad at arrival.

We drove home through a barely awakened Dubai and the moon welcomed us back. To changed it up a little my parents have moved since we were last in Dubai, so we took another exit towards Palm Jumeirah.

At home my Mom had prepared breakfast on the balcony and it was really nice to see both my Mom and Dad as well as their new apartment and their amazing view. I hope you wont get sick of it, because I’ll be showing a lot of it =) We unpacked all our  Swedish goodies and our clothes and although exhausted, since we hadn’t slept more than 1 hour the whole trip, Andy and I decided to stay up and hang out with my Mom, while my Dad went to work.

Although we didn’t last long. We took a small 1 hour nap and after a quick sandwich lunch and sending off my Mom to work, we made our way down to the beach…

The water was cold at first, but really nice and pleasant after a while. The beach is private so only residents can access it and therefore the problems we had last time we were in Dubai, with gawkers, is gone. The water was azure blue and the sun warm – everything was perfect!

After about 2 hours at the beach, we need to slightly careful in the sun – since I always burn, we made our way to the apartment and noticed that Mom had been home, but left again. So we tried to stay awake but fell asleep and slept for a couple of hours, and were awakened by my Dad coming home. 

We started making dinner ready, my Mom had brought home grilled fish, which is both Andy and my favorite Egyptian foods and she served it with fried pike fillets, rice, salad and red onion in vinegar. A real Egyptian feast. 

After dinner, we rolled towards the boardwalk outside the apartment for a walk. It was a beautiful night and we saw that the Beckham’s seemed to have a party at their house =) The rest of the evening we spent on the balcony taking pictures and drinking coffee. 

At around nine p.m. Andy and I went to bed and slept incredibly well…