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

May Roster

It’s that time of the month again… roster time!

Next month I’ve got something different coming up – I’m back on the 777. It’s been 7 months since I last flew on the Boeing, so I’m hoping I haven’t completely forgotten how to do it! 😉

Some of the destinations I’ll be visiting (unless I swap any flights) are:

  • Jakarta
  • Lahore (turnaround)
  • Casablanca
  • Columbo – Singapore (only a short stop in Colombo, overnight in Singapore)
  • Munich
  • Barcelona
  • Islamabad (turnaround)

With the exception of Munich, all of these flights are on the 777. It’ll be fun to get back to flying different aircraft, but most of these flights depart in the middle of the night, so I think an exhausting month is coming up!

I’m all ears for any tips of things to do or see in Jakarta, as I’ve only been once before and didn’t manage to do any exploring. As for Casablanca, I’ve been twice before, and if I don’t swap it I’m planning on trying out a traditional Hammam!

I hope these roster posts are interesting – I feel they may get a bit receptive each month, especially when I don’t get any new destinations.

Please feel free to comment with any suggestions for posts or questions you may have! 🙂

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

April Roster

I’ve had a couple of requests to post my monthly roster – so here’s April for you!

I think I’ve explained before about the bidding system we have. There are 7 groups that all the crew are divided up into (randomly, as far as I can tell) and the bidding system goes by group seniority. So my group (group 5) is at “top bid”, where you supposedly have the highest chances of getting what you bid for, in April.

Even after nearly two and a half years I still haven’t got the bidding system completely sussed out, and I only got 2 of the things I asked for – you can bid for up to 5 (this includes layovers and days off).

  • Barcelona (one of the destinations I bid for!)
  • Munich (didn’t bid for this, but I seem to get it every month regardless!)
  • Los Angeles (trying to swap for our new 42 hour JFK layover)
  • 5 days off (which I bid for)
  • Kuwait turnaround
  • Munich
  • Barcelona

So as you can see – no new destinations again. 🙁

At least I got a couple of Barcelona trips in there, which will be fun as I’m hoping it’ll have warmed up nicely!

As for the lovely string of 5 days off, mum and dad have very kindly invited me to join them in Athens for a little holiday! Unfortunately it’s not quite enough time to visit any of the beautiful Greek islands, so I’ll try and see if I can do that sometime later this year. Any tips for Athens are very welcome! 🙂

P.s. Follow me on Instagram & Twitter for day-to-day updates of where I am in the world and what’s going on! 

A Visit to a Fairytale Castle

One of the great things about my job is that I not only get paid to travel the world, I also get to meet up with my family! My little brother Matt recently moved to Munich with his girlfriend Miriam, and when I saw a flight to Munich on my roster, I knew we would have to do something fun!

Inspired by my friend Taylor’s trip to Neuschwanstein Castle back in the summer (check out her blog here: www.volarelearningtofly.wordpress.com) I decided a day trip to the mountains was on the cards.

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It was a pretty gloomy day, and after an early start and just under 2 hours of driving, we arrived in the village of Hohenschwangau, where the castle is perched on top of the hill.

As the inside is only accessible via guided tour, we paid for our tickets and had around an hour to kill before the 1/2 hour tour. That could only mean one thing – Kaffee und Kuchen! (German for coffee & cake – usually served in the afternoon, but we decided to break tradition!).

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November Roster

So I know we’re already almost a week in to November, but I realised I haven’t put my roster up here!

I’m now officially on my second month of working in business class and I almost feel like I know what I’m doing! 😉

So here goes:

  • New York (which I’ve just done a blog post about!)
  • Singapore
  • London Gatwick
  • Munich
  • Frankfurt (I was originally rostered Beijing but somebody sent me a swap for this!)
  • Paris

All of these flights are on the A380, and I’ve also got quite a few days off in a row which is lovely!

As always feel free to leave me any comments and suggestions for future blog posts 🙂

P.s. Follow me on Instagram & Twitter @rachelwwilson for more day-to-day updates of what’s happening in my life!

A meander around Munich

The morning after I landed from Manchester, I headed straight back to the airport for my next flight – Munich, Germany. As my family live in Austria I thought it would be a great opportunity for them to come and visit, however Harry was the only one who could make it. After a quick plane ride from Vienna he arrived in Munich shortly after I got to our hotel.

Since the weather was so lovely we decided to head straight out into the city, which is only a short underground ride from the hotel. Before we even got to the underground we stumbled across a market selling lots of lovely fresh fruit and veg. Of course I couldn’t resist a few punnets of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and some fresh asparagus that is in season right now. After dropping those back off in the hotel we soon arrived in the town centre.

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The main square in Munich, the Marienplatz, has a huge cathedral and as we arrived we realised it was just coming up to the hour, so we stayed (along with hundreds of other tourists!) to watch the Glockenspiel – while the church bells ring the figurines go around and it’s almost like a little show. Impossible to take pictures of though, haha!

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We walked around quite a bit of the city centre, just enjoying the lovely sunny weather.

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After a while we decided it was time for an ice cream, so stopped and found a little cafe in the sun.

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We then headed over towards the English Gardens. This is a huge park that spans over 370 Hectares and is actually one of the world’s largest urban parks, even bigger than Central Park in New York! Of course we couldn’t explore all of it that evening, so just had a nice walk around.

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As some of the crew had arranged to meet for dinner, we headed back to the hotel for some delicious asparagus ravioli, crisp white wine, and finished off with some traditional “Kaiserschmarren”.

Having been awake since before 5am that morning, I realised I was actually quite tired, and headed up to bed leaving Harry to chat with the rest of the crew for a bit longer.

The next morning we forced ourselves to the gym, and then to cancel all of our hard work out went straight on to breakfast and tried a bit of everything! I find the breakfasts in Germany to be the best; there’s always so much choice and it’s all so fresh!

A quick trip to the supermarket to stock up on a few essentials and all too soon it was time to start getting ready for the flight home. Harry left to get a train to Austria to see the family for a couple of days, and it was back to the airport and sunny Dubai for me.

Thanks for coming all the way to Munich Harry! 🙂

Also just realised I haven’t posted my roster for this month, so here goes:

  • Manchester (check my previous post for this layover!)
  • Munich
  • Zurich
  • Casablanca
  • Hong Kong (so looking forward to this flight, I haven’t been since my very first flight on the A380; I think there’s a post about it somewhere near the beginning of my blog!)
  • Bombay (t/a)
  • London Heathrow

I’m hoping to get back into blogging a little bit more this month after taking a little break, so if there’s anything you’d like me to write about feel free to leave a comment! 🙂

 

P.s. If you want more regular day to day updates of what is happening in my life, follow me on Twitter and Instagram @rachelwwilson!