The Dubai Diaries
My life as a flight attendant in the Middle East!

April Roster

It’s that time of the month again…roster day! It seems to roll around quicker every month, and we’re already over halfway through March, 2017 is definitely flying by!

Next month I’ll be starting with 10 days leave, and I won’t mention yet where we will be heading, but I will say there are some beaches involved! 🙂

After that my flights will be to:

  • BOM – Bombay, India (turnaround)
  • ZRH – Zurich, Switzerland
  • MEL – Melbourne, Australia
  • JED – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (turnaround)
  • ZRH – Zurich, Switzerland
  • MXP – Milan, Italy

I hope you guys are still enjoying my month roster posts, and if there is anything else you’d like to see here on The Dubai Diaries, please feel free to let me know in the comments below!

P.s. Follow me on Instagram & Twitter for more day-to-day updates of where I am in the world! 🙂

Seaplanes in Seattle

I was super excited when I saw Seattle on my roster, it was my first ever flight to the States with Emirates and a city that I absolutely fell in love with. It has a certain charm that just draws you in and I hadn’t visited in over 3 years, so was excited to head back for the 2nd time.

Flight time from Dubai was around 14,5 hours, a little bit shorter than my previous flight to Houston but still very long! Luckily despite a full cabin in First Class we weren’t kept too busy (and having an extra crew member in first on ultra long haul flights is always a bonus) and had a good few hours rest in the CRC.

Around halfway through the flight, we were greeted by some stunning views of beautiful white snowy peaks. Somewhere over Greenland, where most of the passengers were fast asleep oblivious to the natural beauty outside, I sat with my head as close to the window as possible and just thought to myself how lucky I really am, to be able to witness these incredible sights.

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March Roster

As I mentioned in my previous roster post, we all now get our rosters quite a bit earlier, which is lovely as it means you can plan the month ahead a bit more.

Although my bidding seniority is quite low in March, I’m pretty happy and quite pleasantly surprised with my roster for next month!

I’ll be heading off to:

  • SEA – Seattle, USA
  • HAM – Hamburg, Germany
  • HKG – Hong Kong
  • ZRH – Zurich, Switzerland
  • DOH – Doha, Qatar (Turnaround)
  • CKY – DKR – Conakry, Guinea – Dakar, Senegal

I’m super excited to be heading back to Seattle, as I’ve only been once before and I loved the city. You can read about my previous trip here, and see what I got up to. Any tips for anything different to see or do this time would be much appreciated!

I’ve also been to Hamburg a few times before, and my old school friend Georg lives there, so if he’s not working hopefully we’ll be able to catch up.

As for Hong Kong and Zurich, if you read my blog regularly you’ll know that those are two destinations that I love and have flown to fairly often.

I’m also happy that I’ve finally got a new destination – it’ll be my first time visiting both Conakry and Dakar. We actually get 48 hours in Conakry so I should have plenty of time to explore, and then 24 hours in Dakar.

I also have another string of 5 days off, but so far I have no plans and might just take some time to relax in Dubai!

P.s. Follow me on Instagram & Twitter for more day-to-day updates of where I am in the world! 🙂

The Dubai Diaries at home: Miracle Garden

I’m currently on tourist duty in Dubai as my boyfriend’s family are over for a couple of weeks. Although his parents have visited before, we decided to head out to visit the Dubai Miracle Garden.

It was my second time visiting this desert flower garden, which is made up of over 109 million flowers, and spread over 72,000 square metres. I visited with my sister Lizzie, her boyfriend Jarett, and my friend Kirsty’s husband Dan, who was visiting Dubai at the time. You can read about that trip here!

This time we headed out to the Miracle Gardens just after lunchtime, and despite the weather not being great (it’s been grey and cloudy, with temperatures barely reaching the 20’s for the past few weeks!) and it being a weekday, the tourists were out in full force!

Since the gardens are only open from October – April due to the high temperatures in summer, now is the perfect time to visit. The whole layout has actually been changed completely since the last time I visited, and I have to be honest, I preferred it last year! The whole area just seemed too spread out, and not as many interesting sculptures this time.
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48 Hours in Athens

I was very happy when I saw Athens on my roster last month – it is usually a turnaround flight (and a fairly long one at that, around 4 hours each way), and I was rostered it as a 48 hour layover!

The flight left Dubai around 7am, so an early start, as we have to be in briefing 2 hours before departure. The flight was actually 2 sectors, first to Larnaca, and then on to Athens. We only had 1 passenger in first class on the way there, and he closed the doors to his suite and instructed us to let him sleep as much as possible – a very easy first sector!

After landing in Larnaca, most passengers got off, and after a quick job by the cleaners we were ready to board the next set of passengers. Only 38 in total – on the whole plane! As you can imagine that sector went by in a flash, and it’s only just over an hour to Athens.

We are usually 15 crew on the 777, and usually a pretty good mix of nationalities. However on this flight the Greeks were out in full force, and there were only 4 of us who didn’t speak Greek! Once we arrived into Athens, it was a fairly long drive to the hotel, but on the plus side we were staying in the city rather than by the airport.

After a quick nap a few of us (non-Greeks!) met up for some dinner. One of the crew had given us a huge list of all sorts of restaurants and bars to try out during the layover. We headed to one of them for some delicious dinner, and called it a night ready for some sightseeing the next day.

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