Holiday in Dubai – Day 0

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I’m typing this bit on the plane!

We left home around 10am. It was chucking it down with rain, and it was cold – a perfect time for a holiday!

We had a trouble-free drive over to Birmingham Airport and checked-in. The baggage allowance wasn’t particularly generous and we just scraped in (in fact, we may have been slightly over).

On boarding the plane – an Emirates 777-200ER we were impressed straight away. Light-coloured upholstery made the plane feel bigger than it really was (and it was already pretty big with a 3-4-3 seat configuration) and the staffs’ uniform looked stunning in its light brown body and scarlet coloured hats and net veil.

We were seated on the right-hand side in a ‘3’ configuration and fortunately the guy on our right elected to move sets leaving us with a bit more room.

The on-board entertainment system was really something. Literally hundreds of film, TV programmes, Albums and audio books as well as various camera views from the plane itself as well as ‘distance-to-destination, outside temperature.

I watched the following movies:

• Eagle-Eye (A conspiracy theory-type story set in the USA (Where else?)
• Hancock (which was much better than I thought it was going to be – especially once to plot-twist kicked in
• Death Race (with Jason Statham and was a good film too)

We were due to take off around 1.20, but somebody had checked-in but forgotten to board the plane meaning they had to locate and unload his stuff. We eventually took off around 1.45 heading for Dubai some 3500 miles away.

The lunch menu was also equally impressive!

• Appetiser – Oriental shrimp and noodle salad
• Salad
• Main Course – Mango Chicken or Duo of Fish fillets
• Dessert – Triple chocolate delice
• Tea or Coffee
• Chocolates

The food was excellent – restaurant quality – and, they came round with ice-creams and fruit-juice later on too!

Flight time is around 6 hours, and Dubai is, I think, five hours ahead, so we’ll arrive about midnight.