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

Lizzie & Jarett in Dubai

A couple of weeks ago my sister Lizzie and her boyfriend Jarett came to visit me in Dubai. They were passing through on their way to Vietnam, where they will be living for possibly the next year! They managed to time their flights so that we had the whole day to spend together in Dubai.

I landed the evening before just after midnight, so after a couple of hours I went to pick them up at the airport.

Since they’d flown overnight from Vienna, and I’d only had a couple of hours sleep after my flight, we all hap a quick nap at home! They visited last year and we did most of the touristy stuff previously, so there was no real agenda for the day that we planned to follow.

We decided to go to City Walk, which is just a quick drive from where I live, for a walk around and some lunch.

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I believe that I’ve mentioned in some previous posts that the City Walk area has been updated recently and is now even bigger, with plenty of interesting areas to walk around in with painted murals, as well as shops, cafes, restaurants and a cinema.

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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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Amsterdam in the sunshine

If you read my August roster post, you would have seen that I was rostered to fly to LHR this month. Since I went home for 5 days at the end of June, and the timings of the Heathrow flight weren’t ideal to go home, when I was sent a swap for Amsterdam, I decided to accept it! It also meant I could have a lie-in before the flight… 😉

We landed into Amsterdam early evening, and were greeted by the most beautiful sunset. I felt like we deserved it after a very hectic full flight!

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Once we got to the hotel a group of us met downstairs in the restaurant for dinner, and discussed plans for the next day. I’ve been to Amsterdam plenty of times (including before working for Emirates) so I wasn’t particularly fussed about doing much. However the weather forecast looked great and it’s a shame not to enjoy European summer whilst it lasts, so we made plans to head to the city in the morning.

6 of us took the train into the city, and after a short ride were ready to do some exploring! Out of all of the others, I think there was only 1 other person who’d been before, so as you can imagine everyone was stopping to take pictures every few metres. Myself and one of the lovely girls from economy, Sarah (who also reads my blog – yay!) split off and made our way through the windy streets.

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Cycling Central Park, New York!

One of my latest trips took me to the wonderful city of New York, in the good old USA! I still can’t decide if I love NYC or am not too bothered about the city, but since it was just a 24 layover this time I wanted to make the most of my time there.

The weather forecast was looking great – a “cool” 33 degrees, compared to an average of 47 in Dubai that’s the perfect temperature! We departed Dubai around 2 in the morning, so not the best time to be awake. Luckily that meant our passengers were just as tired as we were, and the majority of them slept for a large portion of the flight. After 14 hours (with a 2,5 hour break to sleep in the crew bunks) we finally touched down in JFK, ready for some exploring!

Due to the time difference it was still morning, but by the time we navigated the terrible traffic in the city it was around lunchtime when we finally arrived at the hotel. Myself and one of the other business class crew, Bradley, decided to hire biked and cycle around Central Park.

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The weather was perfect, although I perhaps should have thought to bring some suncream! We found a place offering bikes for 20 dollars for the day, so were soon sorted out with a ride.

There is a huge bike path that’s as big as a road that goes all around the park, so we followed along with the crowd and cycled wherever we liked the look of.

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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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