Going up in the world

Well here we are at sunny Dubai airport (although it's not sunny at all, it's the middle of the night and the air con is positively baltic), and already there is a story to tell.

For a bit of background we are Emirates Silver Skywards Club members as our honeymoon flights last year gained us enough loyalty points to become slightly more special than your bog standard Emirates flyers. This means we can queue jump a bit when checking in and go in the business class queue. Which was just as bloody well as it turns out that we had grossly overestimated how much excess baggage we were allowed to take under the scheme and were 22 kilos over. Which would have cost us around £1200 to fly over to Brisbane. So off we trooped to some cargo shipping company on the other side of the terminal to ship it over a bit cheaper - ended up having to buy a new bag and frantically stuff it with pants and socks before we shipped off our heaviest bag. God only knows when we will see it again but it was considerably cheaper and brought us under our baggage allowance.

Anyway during the course of the whole debacle with the check in folks (who were really lovely) we said we were emigrating, and it came up in conversation that I am not the most confident person on a plane. Bless them they kept trying to get the supervisor over to talk to me to reassure me (as much as is possible) that I was unlikely to die mid flight (as is my usual worry). Anyway the upshot was we checked in, waved everyone off, tropped off through duty free etc (although with a much restricted budget).

Then we got to the gate and they said we had a seat change - and lo and behold we had been upgraded to business class. God only knows how we managed that since I look like a total tramp, in clothes that are as close to pajamas as is humanly possible whilst still being in what is officially defined as daywear. Maybe they just took pity on us because we had been all stressed out checking in and were emigrating and whatnot - all I can say is - Emirates check in girls I salute you!

Flight was bloody marvellous as you'd expect - massive seats that almost recline flat, meal on plates with knives and forks, the cabin crew knew all our names and even dug out a polaroid camera to take a memento piccie of me and stu on our emigration flight. Wonderful. We're currently in the business class lounge at Dubai airport waiting for the next flight, enjoying a wee buffet and some beers. Can't beat it. We're pretty sure we'll be in cattle class for the next leg, but it was still a grand way to start the adventure.

More soon

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