Stopover in Dubai

The journey from Sydney to Madrid was pretty uneventful - which, for us, is really a good thing. All I can say is that the journey was long. Very long - 14 hours Sydney to Dubai, then 8 hours Dubai to Madrid. We only opted for a 2 hour stop over in Dubai thinking that we just wanted to get to Madrid as quickly as possible. In hindsight, not a good move. I think a longer break, even an overnight stay just at the airport would have been better.

It was our first time in Dubai airport and it's huge! The 2 hours was just enough time for a decent toilet break, a quick look in duty-free to check the price of my favourite perfume - which was, not surprisingly, cheaper than Sydney duty-free. Given that we didn't even know where the Gate was and how long it would take to get there (we learned from our 'missed flight' experience in Orlando, Florida) I opted to buy it on the way back.

So off we went following signs to Gate B1. We passed countless shops which we were all dying to check-out but remained focused on our goal - Gate B1. It was now 45 minutes before our departure time, had no idea where it was, and the sign said 'Boarding'. Yikes. Signs led us to a train, so we caught the train. Then arrows pointed this way and that way, so we followed them too. It seemed like the ever elusive B1. When we finally got to Gate B1 the line was thinning out - so clearly we had missed the 'priority kids boarding' but I was just glad we made it in time. So we got through all the necessary checks, followed the hallway, down the escalators, down more escalators, then onto the tarmac where we had to board a bus. Great! After all that we weren't even at the plane yet.

So here we are crammed standing in this bus for what I thought was a short 2-minute bus ride to the plane. It turned out to be a 15-minute bus ride!

The bus ride was pretty interesting and probably the first time I really felt that we had 'left home'. Suddenly we were surrounded by Spanish-speaking and Spanish-looking people. The English language was already starting to disappear. The chatter on the bus, though foreign, seemed all too familiar. I suddenly felt like I was sitting at a family gathering as a child, partially making sense of the conversations taking place between the aunts and uncles around me. I could barely understand anything. The extent of my Spanish comprehension now seems to be as sophisticated as Dora the Explorer.

We finally arrived at our stop. As we climbed the stairs to the plane I took a sweeping look around at our surroundings. We were in the middle of what seemed liked the biggest airplane parking lot I had ever seen. Rows of Emirates planes just lined up next to each other.

"Wow!", I thought. This is Dubai!