A trip to Harvard & Boston

So as you may have read in my previous post, I recently got back from a lovely 30-hour layover in Boston. I was originally rostered to fly to Singapore but since I had very low hours last month due to having short-ish flights and some leave, I decided to swap to get my hours up a bit.

I visited Boston once before, in January, when I was on reserve. It was freezing and snowy but still sunny, so I took the hop-on hop-off bus and explored the city. This time I was determined to visit Harvard university, as I ran out of time on the previous trip.

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After arriving at the hotel, most of us arranged to meet for dinner at 7. Since there were a couple of hours still to kill until then, I debated whether to have a nap or not, but I knew that if I did I’d sleep right through til 4am! Instead I took my time getting ready, then made my way down to the bar and met with one of the girls from economy. Finally a few of the other crew showed up, and we made our way to a seafood restaurant called Legal Test Kitchen. We had the table booked for 13 of us, but in the end only 6 showed! Slightly embarrassing…but that’s precisely why I didn’t take a nap, or I would have missed dinner for sure!

The next morning myself and one of the other crew met at 8:30 to head over to Harvard. I grabbed a coffee from the Starbucks inside the hotel, and we walked the 10 minutes or so to South Station to take the metro.

It didn’t take long to reach Harvard, and although it’s not entirely clear which direction to head when you step out of the train station, we soon found the main university buildings.

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A day in the life: long-haul flight

Most of my posts here on The Dubai Diaries are all about my layovers – what I get up to, if I go out sightseeing, where to eat and the likes. So I thought it was about time I did another post (click here to see the last one I wrote) detailing a bit more of my actual job, since that’s the reason I get to travel so much! It may seem like I spend all my time exploring new places and trying new food, but I work hard to get to the destination!

In fact, Emirates was just announced as the World’s Best Airline 2016 by Skytrax! That certainly makes me very proud and happy to be part of such a global brand.

I recently came back from Boston, and since long haul flights are a bit different to normal for us cabin crew, keep reading to find out why.

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Boston Baby!

I’ve just got back from my last flight of my reserve month. I was rostered home standby from 3am – 9am and around 4 o’clock in the morning I got a call from crew control letting me know I’d be heading to Boston! I was pretty excited, as I’ve never flown to Boston before and I knew it would be wintery and snowy there.

I quickly packed my suitcase, got ready and made my way to our headquarters. The Boston flight is operated on a 777-300, which is exciting as I haven’t done a US flight on the 777 since I worked in economy! I was particularly looking forward to the CRC (crew rest compartment, our little bunk beds) as it’s so much bigger than on the A380!

Flight time was 13,5 hours, and we were kept busy most of the time. Once we arrived in chilly Boston (1 degree!) a few of us arranged to meet up for some dinner. Since none of us knew the area, the concierge recommended a restaurant called Legal Seafood. There seem to be a few of them around Boston, so we got a taxi to the closest one to our hotel.

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And since we were in Boston after all, it seemed only right to order a lobster roll! Delicious 🙂

The next morning I woke up super early (always the case in the States, as there’s a pretty big time difference from Dubai) and headed to the gym. I’ve been trying to get back into my fitness and have been making sure to take my gym kit with me on layovers and actually use it, rather than letting it sit in my suitcase! I’ve especially been loving the Nike Training Club app, which has some great workouts which are really easy to follow.

After my workout I headed to breakfast, where I decided what my plan of action for the day was. Since none of the other crew were up to much due to the cold, I planned to take the hop-on hop-off trolley bus tour. At $37 it was a little pricey, but since I didn’t know my way around the city I thought it would be a good option.

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