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

March Roster

As I mentioned in my previous roster post, we all now get our rosters quite a bit earlier, which is lovely as it means you can plan the month ahead a bit more.

Although my bidding seniority is quite low in March, I’m pretty happy and quite pleasantly surprised with my roster for next month!

I’ll be heading off to:

  • SEA – Seattle, USA
  • HAM – Hamburg, Germany
  • HKG – Hong Kong
  • ZRH – Zurich, Switzerland
  • DOH – Doha, Qatar (Turnaround)
  • CKY – DKR – Conakry, Guinea – Dakar, Senegal

I’m super excited to be heading back to Seattle, as I’ve only been once before and I loved the city. You can read about my previous trip here, and see what I got up to. Any tips for anything different to see or do this time would be much appreciated!

I’ve also been to Hamburg a few times before, and my old school friend Georg lives there, so if he’s not working hopefully we’ll be able to catch up.

As for Hong Kong and Zurich, if you read my blog regularly you’ll know that those are two destinations that I love and have flown to fairly often.

I’m also happy that I’ve finally got a new destination – it’ll be my first time visiting both Conakry and Dakar. We actually get 48 hours in Conakry so I should have plenty of time to explore, and then 24 hours in Dakar.

I also have another string of 5 days off, but so far I have no plans and might just take some time to relax in Dubai!

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

February Roster

I’m currently on leave, and for once I’ve stayed in Dubai! 😉

My sister Lizzie and her boyfriend Jarett are here staying with me for a while; they’ve been living in the US and flew over from Dallas. So this means full tourist mode is on!

A couple of days ago I got my roster for February, so here it is, in case anyone is interested! 🙂

  • Houston (technically this is on my Jan roster but I land back into DXB in Feb!)
  • Zurich
  • Sydney – Auckland – Sydney
  • Zurich
  • Brisbane – Auckland – Brisbane

So as you can see they’ve given me two trips to Zurich (as obviously I haven’t been there enough already, haha!) and two multi sector trips. I haven’t done a multi sector trip for aaaaages (other than my Rio – Buenos Aires trip back in September) and I can’t say I’m looking forward to them!

They’re very tiring and you get very jet lagged in Australia, but I’ll try and make the most of them and have a good time anyway! At least for once I’ll have a new destination, as I’ve never been to Brisbane before 🙂

Just a short post today as I’ve got guests – but there’ll be one up soon with some pictures from my trip to Barcelona!

P.s. Follow me on Instagram & Twitter @rachelwwilson for more day to day updates on my life!

A walk in the forest

My most recent trip took me to the lovely Zurich in Switzerland. I think this was my fourth or fifth time visiting, and as I’ve been to the city a couple of times I was keen to explore a new area. A group of about 8 of us decided to go and discover the forest which is located very close to the hotel we stay at. ImageImage Taking a well-earned break….or maybe just a photo-op, as this bench was actually just outside the forest! ImageImageImage Doing my best Sound of Music impression. ImageImageImage In the middle of the forest we came across a little duck pond, covered in algae but very peaceful. ImageImageImageImage All in all a lovely walk through the forest. It’s so easy to forget how wonderful nature is when you’re surrounded by it every day, but when you live in the desert you really learn to appreciate all of the greenery!

 

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!

 

Feeling….homesick?!

I have to say I didn’t think this day would ever come, but the past couple of days I have not been feeling myself at all…and now I’m admitting it, I feel homesick!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Dubai, but after my last trip I came back and nobody was home, and I realised why a lot of crew say this can be a very lonely job! I went to Zurich, which was an amazing flight, such a lovely crew and really nice passengers as well. I even had to make the German PA for the first time which I was shitting myself slightly about, but I managed not to mess up 😀 We had a great layover and all the crew came to the hotel bar for drinks (even the FO joined us!) in the evening, and the next day a few of us took the train into the city for a little walk around. It was my first layover in a cold place, and I guess a combination of that and speaking German again made me miss home!
I never thought I would say that, because I’m not a person that gets homesick at all! I’ve lived  away from home so many times – France for 6 months aged 13, Costa Rica for 6 months aged 17, Spain for 3 months aged 18…moving to Austria when I was almost 15, and I have never really felt homesick! Maybe it was because I knew I was coming home? But I’m planning on staying here in Dubai for a long time, and I think it hit home that I don’t know when I’m going to see my family next!

So for now I’m just trying not to think about home too much and focus on my next trip….to Singapore and Melbourne! SO SO SO excited! It’s a 5 day trip, which should be fun as so far I’ve only had 24 hour layovers. In Melbourne I’ll be meeting up with my cousin which I am looking forward to a lot!

After the Zurich flight some of the crew arranged to go out in the evening, which was really nice as usually everyone says bye and then you never see each other again! 
Yesterday a few of the girls and I were going to go out for dinner and drinks….it turned into another night out! Was very fun though and I stopped feeling homesick which was great. I’ve missed seeing everyone!

Thought I would put in a couple of pictures of Zurich…it’s a pretty place, but the weather was pretty cloudy and there isn’t really all that much to see/do!
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