Happiness Street, Dubai

We arrived at Gatwick at 6.45am and everything went smoothly to a point, having pre-booked the car into the Valet Parking. Alan had also booked the priority security which means you can bypass the queue - that's where it went wrong!  I took a carry on bag full of my camera equipment, and when it went through the x-ray machines it got sent off down the aisle to be searched, except it didn't go down the conveyer belt like the others it went off in a different direction and sat there on it's own.  I waited until a security guard asked whose bag it was, and frantically waved my arm.  He still didn't bring the bag, but came over and questioned me as to the contents.  I told him it was camera equipment, my book and a small rucksack with my purse, sunglasses etc.  He then asked if there was a flash gun inside - yes there was.  It turned out, that my flash gun looks like a taser!  Anyway, bag thoroughly searched we were allowed to go on our way.

We stocked up on wine at duty free, as of course you can't buy wine in Dubai, but you are allowed to take in 4 litres per person,  although we didn't buy that much, just 5 bottles of rose and a bottle of champagne.  I'd thought on and took a cabin size trolley case to carry it in so that we weren't chinking our way around.  We then went in search of breakfast, and ended up at Jamie Oliver's where I had eggs benedict and a bucks fizz, and Alan had smoked salmon and scrambled egg with a latte.

No sooner as we'd eaten, it was time to head to the gate and lucikly because Alan has his silver card, we got priority boarding even though we were only travelling in Economy.  A lovely lady came to sit next to us, who is a paediatrician working at Guys Hospital in London and she was on her way to Pakistan to visit her family, except they didn't know she was on her way.  On reaching Dubai, she was going to phone her mum to surprise her!

The flight was great, we left on time and landed on time, there was no turbulence, the food was great and the seats and leg room were very comfy.  I also had free wifi so was chatting to GadgetKid, and also Rachel via What's App while she was at work :-) Both Alan and I watched Bohemian Rhapsody which was excellent, but the weird thing was that one of the air stewards was the double of Freddie Mercury, and it was a little bizarre when he was serving wine while we were watching the film.  I very sneakily took a photo of him which I've added to my extras - see what you think.  After lunch I watched A Star is Born and enjoyed that film too, and by the time it finished we were landing in Dubai at 8.15pm (Dubai time).

The airport was really busy and it took about 30 minutes of queuing for the passport control and by the time we got to our hotel it was about 10pm.  We'd booked a deluxe one bedroomed apartment, but have been upgraded to a premier apartment on the 20th floor, with a huge balcony with this view onto Happiness Street and we have the Burj Khalifa to the left as well. I love the name 'Happiness Street' and we're certainly happy so far.

We've unpacked, nipped to the local supermarket and I cracked open the wine, but now it's time for bed as it's 2am here (10pm in the UK), and we've been up sine 5am, so I'll say goodnight x