Breakfast in Dubai, Lunch in Melbourne, Dinner in Auckland

I’ve just got back from a 6 day trip down under – a night in Melbourne, quick hop to Auckland for 24 hours, then back to Melbourne for another day. The last time I did this trip was back in January, when I got it on my reserve month. I normally tend to avoid multi-sectors as I always end up a bit jet-lagged, but I couldn’t say no this time as I was going to see my cousin Sarah!

She was away in New York on exchange last time I came to Melbourne, but luckily this time around she managed to get some time off work so we could hang out!

The trip over was nice and uneventful, and after a 12,5 hour flight we landed into Melbourne at around 6am.

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I headed to bed for a couple of hours, and soon enough it was time to get ready to meet Sarah for some late breakfast. It was a pretty grey and miserable day, 12 degrees and a drizzle of rain. Just what I needed after a constant 40 degrees in Dubai!

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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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Sunshine & Aperol in Bologna, Italy

It was an early start for my flight to Bologna, and we left Dubai on time at 9am. The cabin was less than half full in business class, which made for a nice and easy flight, and we landed into sunny Bologna in the early afternoon, ready to explore!

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It was the first time for all of us, since it’s a relatively new destination for Emirates, so a big group of us set out to see what the city has to offer.

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Jordan, Malaysia, India, Switzerland…

So these are some of the places that have been put on my roster ….. yes, my very first flight is happening in 5 days time!! I’ll be flying a turnaround to Amman, Jordan, which is about a 4 hour flight from Dubai. I’m guessing it will be pretty tiring as we about 2 hours or so there, then come straight back the same day. After that I have a week of “can use” – basically where I will be sitting at home waiting to hear whether or not I have a flight!
And after that…some exciting destinations! I have a layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which I am so excited about, as well as a turnaround to Chennai, India, and another layover in Zurich at the end of the month!

I can’t believe how quickly time flies; in only 2 days I will have finally finished my training. Sometimes it feels like I have been in training college forever, and then I realise I have only actually been here for almost 8 weeks! Luckily I am still absolutely loving it and am so glad I made the decision to come!

During service training so far we have had 2 mock-up flights, one to London Heathrow and one to Ahmedabad (India), and tomorrow we have our final one to Sydney. We are split into 2 groups and take it in turns to either be crew or customers. The first time I was doing the bar cart, so I had to serve drinks to our customers, and then on the Ahmedabad I was doing pre-flight checks, boarding, welcome services, and also tea and coffee service after the meal. On our Sydney mock-up tomorrow I’ll be in the first group, serving lunch. As there are 8 of us and 8 customers, not everyone can do every part of the service, so I’m hoping I will get to do the actual meal cart to give me some practice before my first flights! After we have done our service, the crew and customers swap round, so we will be having a snack served to us and then breakfast as well! 😀

Last Thursday my dad had a quick overnight stopover in Dubai, so he came to visit my apartment for some lunch before training college which was very nice! He also brought me a bottle of wine which was consumed very quickly the next evening 😉 (Not by myself, my friends Michelle and Sally helped!). As usual we all went out at the weekend, Thursday night to Crystal and Friday night to Mahiki! Sally and I also had a quick trip to Dubai Mall on Friday, as the weather wasn’t great (windy and even a bit of rain!) so we couldn’t spend all day at the pool like we usually do. Saturday I managed to stay in bed feeling a little bit (a lot!) worse for wear and only got out to go to the door when the pizza I ordered was delivered! Ultimate lazy day, but then again these weekends where everyone is home at the same time will not be happening much once we start flying!

I’ll try and get a few pictures up soon, right now it is almost 2am and I have just had a really nice long skype session with my best friend Lucy back in England and so I am feeling very tired and ready for bed!