Saturday, February 6, 2010

Bye Bye Dubai and the Long Trip to Home

Well, it's that time again - time to return to HOME-SWEET-HOME! I thoroughly enjoyed my short overnight stay in Dubai. This time I booked a room at the Intercontinental Festival City Hotel (shown above). The hotel is right next door to the Festival City Mall (pictured below) - one of the newest malls in Dubai. There are plenty of choices from which to select when it comes to restaurants and coffee shops.

I believe I've said this before but I'll say it again, if you have never been to the Middle East, try to arrange at least one visit to Dubai. It's an adult playground, very relaxed, alcohol is allowed at the hotels, and a visitor can get an excellent introduction to life in the Middle East. Just bring your credit cards folks as it is expensive to stay here!! Try it, you'll like it!


Coffee break in the Festival City Mall.

Outside view of the Festival City Mall next to the Intercontinental Hotel.

I spotted this 'medicine' in the pharmacy section of the HyperPanda supermarket store in the Festival City mall. Anyone have any idea what this stuff is good for and does it really work??!!

A great place to purchase teas. (This particular store is located somewhere within the Festival City mall.)

My itinerary home was NOT one I would have chosen! The Society of Petroleum Engineers booked my ticket and selected my return via Delta 7 from Dubai to Atlanta. I departed Dubai at the delightful hour of 11:30 pm. Wheels up was @ midnight. We landed at Atlanta International Airport after 14 hours and 40 minutes of flying. I did NOT like the seating ergonomics aboard Delta's Business Class section. The seats are way too cramped for a tall person like myself. At any rate, at least we were not delayed and upon arrival I managed to zip thru immigration and customs in a relatively short time. I rode the train to Concourse 'D' and waited about 2 hours for my connecting flight home. We departed from Gate D13 on time (!) but had to wait a while before actually taking off. Our plane (Flight 5179) was way behind a long line of other jets waiting to take off at Atlanta's airport (picture above). Once I was at home in my apartment, I unpacked a little and then dove into bed for a blissful sleep! Home at last!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Terrific - I am very glad you made it home safely!!! At the very least, get caught up on the 8 hours of jetlag; Melatonin should help adjust the body clock.

chemist said...

Al:

Yep .. melatonin is included in my plan. Typically it takes me one day for each one hour of time shifting. So for this trip to the Middle East, it takes about one week to fully adjust!

Traveling Chemist

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