Airports, planes and cars ...

 Airport

How we spent our day today ... We got to the  Dubai airport well on time last night, boarded the plane after midnight, it got to the runway ready for take-off and then it stopped ! One motor wouldn't start. The plane got towed back to the gate and we stood there for an hour while they tried to fix it. No luck with that, so just as most people has fallen asleep the captain said that this flight was cancelled. Mad rush to wake, get our stuff and get back inside to hear what was being arranged for the passengers now. First of all we needed to get back through security, which took about 45 minutes. Then a queue for the re-arrangements, we were about 20th in the line. It was 3:30 am when we got a seat in the lounge, 4:00 am when we heard what was being arranged for us, a booking on Emirates to fly to Brussels at around 8 am, and then a KLM flight from Brussels to Amsterdam. So on to the Emirates lounge, where we had to stay awake in order not to miss the next flight (no announcements in that lounge, apart from the call for prayer times). At the break of dawn that skyrocketing structure of the Burj Khalifa was the first to light up through the morning haze (see the extra collage). Rather frustrating to have a landing in Brussels, when the car was at Schiphol. Anyway, to cut a long story short, no further mishaps, we have arrived back home in Brussels with the car, apart from missing one suitcase which so far doesn't seem to have been located yet. Wish us luck with that, it's got Derk's business suits and my best fitting clothes amongst other things. By the way, however inconvenient it was, better that they did find this out before we were in flight than afterwards !

My Blip image is the sunset around Antwerp harbour captured from the car while driving home, sort of a 'all's well that ends well'image,  the extra photo has  a collage of images from  the lounges at Dubai and the boarding area A at Brussels airport .