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

Sunset, Steak & Rain in Rio

If you follow me on Instagram you may well have seen that somehow I was lucky enough to swap two of my not-so-lovely night turnarounds to Mashhad and Hyderabad (both leaving at atrocious times of the night and coming back around lunchtime-ish!) for a flight to Rio de Janeiro!

Now, for anyone that is crew, you’ll know that this is a practically impossible trip to swap on to! Rio is one of our most highly desired trips, and even after bidding for it for years I’ve only been lucky enough to get it once, way back when I was still working in economy. You can read all about it here. This time around, instead of heading onwards to Buenos Aires (and then back to Rio for another day) I would be spending 30 hours in Rio and then flying back to Dubai.

I can’t lie, working in first class does have it’s perks. Whilst economy and business class were completely chockablock, we were lucky enough to just have one passenger in first! So in-between looking after him and the flight deck and helping out in economy to keep ourselves busy, the 14-hour flight went by fairly smoothly.

We touched down in Rio in the afternoon, and were welcomed by beautiful sunshine and palm trees.

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Sunset in Central Park

Not long ago I was rostered a flight to New York, the city that never sleeps.

After a long 14 hour flight, we landed into JFK airport and were soon on our way to our hotel in the city. Since it was a nice evening, a group of us decided to walk to Central Park to have a drink and watch the sunset.

The view from my room – skyscrapers galore!

Our hotel is right by Times Square, so it’s not a long walk towards Central Park. However it was very busy, but then again that’s New York for you, always busy and full of people!

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Snapshots from Barcelona

Barcelona…one of my favourite cities in the world! I lived nearby in a small seaside town for 3 months one summer doing an internship as a hotel receptionist, and most weekends or days off we would jump on the train and head into the city.

So every time I see Barcelona on my roster, I’m always happy!

We arrived fairly late in the evening and a few of the crew were heading down for tapas. Normally I would have joined them as I love tapas, but it was already late and considering I wasn’t actually even hungry, I decided to give it a miss this time.

The next morning I was up fairly early and popped down to the breakfast buffet, where I bumped into a few of the other crew. We decided to head into the city for a stroll around, as the weather was gorgeous.

Our first stop was the Boqueria Market, a huge covered market selling all sorts of tasty treats.

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A day out in Cambridge, England

A couple of weeks ago I had a nice little string of 5 days off, and it just so happened that the first day was my mum’s birthday! With a bit of sneaky planning with my siblings I managed to get on the first flight out to London, and Jarett (my sister Lizzie’s boyfriend), managed to come and pick me up from the airport, all while Mum had no idea I was coming home. My brother Matt and his girlfriend Miriam had just been to visit and my other brother Harry had also just arrived, so we almost had the whole family at home!

I was lucky as the weather was the start of the hottest week of the year so far, absolutely beautiful blue skies and sunshine every day.

Actual clouds…a rare occurrence in Dubai!

As I walked through the door mum still had no idea I was coming….and she was just a bit surprised, to say the least! 😀 First things first of course, I whipped up a birthday cake which we sat down and enjoyed with a cup of tea. When in Rome…!

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An Afternoon in Windsor with Pixter

I’ve just got back from another trip to London Heathrow, and decided it was time to explore a part of the UK I’ve not visited before. Since our crew hotel is just by Heathrow Airport, it’s only around a 20 minute drive to Windsor, so myself and 2 other crew, Ananda from Brazil & Alex from Italy, got in an Uber and made our way there.

Unfortunately Windsor Castle was closed for visitors by the time we arrived, as last entry is at 4pm, so if I get an earlier flight to London I’ll try and go back so I can visit the inside as well. I hadn’t actually done much research about what to see or do in Windsor other than the castle, so we pretty much decided to just stroll wherever we fancied!

Windsor Castle is actually a royal residence and functioning royal home, and is owned by the Queen – she also uses it as a weekend home as well as for state banquets and official entertaining. The original castle was built in the 11th century and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe.

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