Finally Time!

Before our trip, work was crazy. I had accepted a new position within my company so I was in mad dash to make sure people knew what to support while I was gone, meet my new team, and interview a few people for an open role I had.

In addition to this a few days prior to our trip we received a notification from Delta that inclement weather may impact our flight into New York. Now we had planned on flying into New York Friday night, stay at an AirBnB near the airport as our flight out of JFK to Dubai was scheduled at 8 AM Saturday morning.  Once we got the notification we knew we couldn’t afford to miss the flight to New York since the leg to NYC wasn’t connected to our other portions of the trip.  If we missed getting to New York in time we potentially would miss our flight to Dubai.  So we started to assess our options, we really couldn’t fly out on Thursday so it was a question of leaving earlier on Friday.  I had planned on packing morning of but due to uncertainty of if we needed to catch an earlier flight I thankfully packed on Thursday so I could be ready to run out the door whenever it looked good.

Ultimately, we decided to chance it.  Our flight was scheduled for Friday night, arriving into NYC at 11 PM. While I was driving down to Cecilia’s I got the first notification that yes our flight was indeed delayed. Due to timing of new arrival (near 1 AM) we decided to skip going to the AirBnB and just push through and hang out at the airport.

Our flight ended up being delayed about 2-3 hours, but Delta was awesome and had pizza at the gate that they were handing out to passengers.  On boarding the plane, Cecilia got a 1st class upgrade and I was sequestered to the Comfort seat, but thankfully I got the last minute save and got my seat in first class as well.

New York

Once we got to JFK, we had to wait a little bit because they had problems getting the jet bridge raised  high enough up to the plane. Unfortunately they weren’t able to resolve the problem so we had a bit of a step down. It reminded me of a flight to Mexico I had years ago with my family for my brother’s wedding, when the pilot stopped me before I stepped off the plane because “El gapo es el faro” or so he exclaimed to the ground crew.  I did enjoy being reminded of that little memory.

We had opted to check our bags to New York so we had to leave the security section of the airport to collect them and with it being near 2 AM all check in kiosks for our next flight was closed so we had to hunker down on the ground near check in. I felt like we were back in kindergarten and where you slept on rugs on the ground for naptime.

At 6 AM the check in queues opened up so we sauntered up to the desk bleary eyed but excited to get the trip started.  We were flying Virgin Atlantic and with the Delta partnership and our status we were allowed to use the Virgin SkyClub before our flight. This was a little moment of heaven for us as we found a few couches that were begging to be curled up in so we ordered some food and attempted to get in a quick nap before the flight.

 

In Transit

I don’t know what it is but they like to keep everyone fresh on the plane and keep the air temp at icebox level so I was quite happy that we had extra blankets to burrow under. Thankfully the flight to Dubai was much warmer than the flight to London.

Getting through customs was easy.  We were uncertain at this time if we could engage eye contact or openly talk with the airport officials being women and not wanting to offend if the culturally it wasn’t acceptable. So while we believe we heard and saw the stamper come out we weren’t certain if both passports were stamped and looking through our books neither one of us could see new stamps. We were disappointed as getting a stamp in our passports is almost a rite of passage for going to a new country.

 Arrival

We mentally prepared ourselves for the onslaught of heat that would hit us once we went outside, we were pleasantly surprised that even though it was 100 degrees at this time it really wasn’t too bad. We arrived at our hotel, Towers Rotana, which was located in the financial district close to the metro and to the Burj Khalifa.

It was mid-morning and at first they had a problem locating our reservation (this is where I thought okay, here is when the gotcha happens) but they found the reservation after a bit of looking. Appears they had it listed under our middle name versus last. Our room wasn’t ready yet but they said they could have it available shortly. So while we debated do we just push through and head out now, we decided to wait as the tiredness was creeping in. We thought hey lets take a quick catnap and head out, let’s just say once we got to our room an hour or so later our 30 minute nap turned into a 4 hour sleepathon. 

 Our room was quite lovely, and had a cozy little day nook right near the windows. Cecilia is pictured above enjoying the view. We were set up on the 23rd floor and had a great view of the buildings in the area.  Let’s just say the Emeriate people are not scared of pushing the envelope and going for wonderful architectural details. Unfortunately, 2 buildings nearby were right in the sightlines of the Burj Khalifa.

After our “little” snooze we went out to go explore, figured we would grab a bite to eat, see the Dubai Mall and get our first glimpse of the Burj up close and personal.  We found a wonderful Lebanese place, Al Safadi, nearby our hotel across the way of one of the freeways.  We grabbed a bunch of small plates and had a nice meal. The light as air fluffy bread was my favorite. Towards the end of the meal we welcomed going back outside to warm up as the AC was on full blast.

One item to note, the maps of the city are deceiving!  What seemed walkable and close by is not.  Dubai is a massively spread-out city. We had to estimate that it has to be at least 10 miles wide.  There was no way we were going to make on foot to the mall.  We decided to head back to the hotel, freshen up, catch up on the ongoings of the world and call it an early night. We ended our evening in the little nook area which had some nice blackout curtains so we set up there for awhile, blocking out the room light and enjoyed the lights of the cityscape.