Well, here we are, we have arrived at my voyage home. I had so much fun in Dubai!! These memories will stick with me for a lifetime. I am so very grateful to Nathan for the sacrifice he made for me to be able to enjoy those two weeks with my family. I am grateful to my parents for helping out with it all. And I am extremely grateful to my little brother, because without him, none of this would have been possible, that and he's just an awesome little brother.
I have also greatly enjoyed writing these blog posts, it has given me the chance to go back and remember all of the fun I had. It has been super helpful do indulge my curiosity in researching interesting facts about the places I visited and the things I saw; because it's kept me from going stir crazy because of my ankle surgery. I hope those of you who have come and visited my blog have enjoyed this trip down my memory lane.
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| Bags are all packed and ready to head to the airport. |
After two weeks of fun in the sun, it was time to head home, and time to be a time traveler, again!! Which also meant that I would have three time zones to keep track of, Dubai, San Francisco, and Utah.
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Arriving at Dubai airport. That place is HUGE!! The ticket terminal is called, terminal F and terminal B. The other terminals are A, C, D, etc. So, why the terminal F and B......for Front and Back, of course. No joke!!
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| Hauling all of our luggage into the airport. |
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| Since we are flying on standby, we had to wait for a bit before our tickets were issued to us. So, we found some comfy chairs to hang out in. We noticed that there are mirrors on the ceiling. And what does one do when one find mirrors on the ceiling...... |
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| .......One takes a picture, of course!! |
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| They had all of these beautiful etched glass walls everywhere. They took their sweet time issuing our tickets to us, so we didn't have as much time as we would have liked to leisurely make our way to our terminal. So, I didn't get the chance to stop and get some better pictures. I quickly snapped this picture just before we boarded our plane. |
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| Not our plane, but I wanted to get a good shot of a plane, it was our "next door neighbor" plane. |
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| This is our plane....... |
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| And this is us walking down the First Class boarding ramp. |
It's a tricky business planning ahead for such a huge time change. We would be leaving Dubai on Thursday morning for Dubai, but Wednesday night for Utah. We would arrive home in Utah on Thursday night.
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| Peek-a-boo next door neighbor airplane. |
I wanted to make sure that I would be good, tired, and ready for bed when we arrived home.
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| I loved having the cameras on the plane. The one in the tail is my favorite. Birds eye view of our terminal. |
My parents and I decided that we would just stay awake for the entire trip (about 28 traveling hours total).
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| Taxiing to the runway. Hello other airplane!! |
In hind sight, if I ever do get the opportunity to do this again, I would not take my Ambien the night before we leave and try to stay awake all night, and if I fell asleep, it wouldn't matter because as soon as we board the plane, I would take my Ambien and go to sleep. That way, when I woke up, theoretically I would be on Utah time.
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| We had a bit of a wait before our turn. |
Let me tell you, trying to stay awake for 28 hours straight was not fun.
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| Goodbye Burj Khalifa. |
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| Goodbye Dubai!! |
I'm going to give you a head's up warning, I got a bit camera happy and took tons of pictures.
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| Flying over Russia, maybe? |
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| Somewhere with snow capped mountains anyway. |
My trip home was a bit surreal for me. Having got the news about my cat, there was a sadness about boarding the airplane and coming home. Don't get me wrong, I was very much looking forward to seeing Nathan and the kids again, and sleeping in my own bed, but yet at the same time, I wasn't going home to the way things were when I left.
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| Once our flight was well underway, I ordered some breakfast..... |
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| ....and took a picture of the clouds beneath us. |
So, on the trip over to Dubai, I was so excited to fly Emirates First Class that I had completely forgot that not only does the Airbus A380 have the fabulous first class compartments and the shower, it also has a first class lounge at the back of the plane. I made it a point on the return trip to take a visit to the lounge.....
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| It was surprisingly spacious. |
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| The flight attendants were all fabulous and friendly. |
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| Have to have a picture in the lounge. |
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| The treats were all very tasty. |
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| Picture from the lounge window. |
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| Relax, chill out, watch some TV......what more could one want? Behind those curtains is where the galley is. |
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| It was quite the experience. |
I took a quick video of the first class lounge, enjoy.....
We flew over the North Pole both times. Going to Dubai, I had been asleep when we flew over the North Pole, but this time I was awake....
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| It was so beautiful. Pictures just don't do it justice. |
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| I couldn't get a good picture, but beneath the cloud cover you could see the ice pack that is the North Pole. There were huge cracks and gullies that ran through it. It was really neat to look at it all. |
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| Just beautiful. |
I took a quick video of us flying over the North Pole. It isn't the best video ever, but I find it quite entertaining because I was getting pretty tired and slap happy.
The sun started to set, came really really close to setting, and then rose again. The sun never fully set, it was quite weird but extremely beautiful to see. The following pictures are what I got of the path of the sun as we flew up and over the North Pole.
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| oh look, the sun is going down, I guess it's going to be night soon.... |
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| That is a lovely sunset. |
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| Sure is taking a while for the sun to go down. |
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| I could watch this forever....... |
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| ......and ever. |
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| It's getting closer to setting, I hope I can stay awake once night falls....... |
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| This is the lowest the sun ever got. |
To be quite honest, I kept expecting the sun to fully set and night to come, but I was highly surprised when......
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| Wait a second, why is the sun rising again, it never set in the first place?? |
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| The North Pole is so strange. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. |
The sun began to rise again....no night for me!!
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| No night for you!! |
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| And just like that, we are back to daylight. Good morning sunshine, the world says hello!! |
If that doesn't just mess with one's internal clock, then I don't know what does. Because let me tell you, by this time my internal clock didn't know if it was coming or going. Being a "time traveler" is so weird. The flight in "real" time was about 16 hours, however in the "twilight zone", our flight from Dubai to San Francisco only took about four hours.
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| I will never get over just how beautiful it is up here. |
Before I knew it, it was time to take my shower and get ready for our descent into San Francisco.......
Told ya that I got camera happy. In my defense though, they are all really pretty pictures.......well, at least I think they are.... And yes, I also took plenty of video as well. The next two videos, we shall call, Tired one and Tired 2.
I think I would make a pretty good announcer.
All the little houses on the little ground.....little ants.
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| Almost feels like you could be falling. |
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| Hello San Francisco. |
The flight from Dubai to San Francisco was about 16 hours, add onto that the three hours I had been awake before take off, and I had been awake for about 19 hours straight. I was getting a bit slap happy.
That little grayish dot in front of us is the runway.....
The next three video's are the landing. I find them entertaining because you can tell how tired I am with how slow I talk and my long pauses. That and take-off and landing are my absolute favorite parts of the plane ride.
Chick-a-chick-a-pew...
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| Here comes the runway. |
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| We didn't have any planes to race this time. |
I am now back on American soil.
Listen to those engines roar.....rawr.
And the very last video (but not photo, although we are almost done with those too).....
Pulling into the terminal.
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| And this ends my relaxing flight in first class.... |
With a very huge sigh, we departed our luxurious first class cabins and went back to being peasants...... and let me tell you, that was sure a kick in the pants... Nothing like going from first class Emirates to the "cattle cars" we are all used to.
Funny that the longest part of our journey was the easiest. After getting off Emirates, the "fun" began.....Our adventures were far from being over.
First up was getting through customs........
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| It was an absolute mad house in there!! |
The lines were horrendously long. The building was small and we were packed like sardines. I don't get over-heated often so when I say, "it's hot in here," for the rest of you it probably feels like you are roasting in Hell. But I tell ya, it was HOT in there, and not just hot but muggy with tired and smelly people.
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| We ended up waiting about two hours to get through customs. |
We landed in San Francisco at around noon and our flight home wasn't scheduled to take off until 7....so we had a fair bit of time to kill....
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| They didn't have anywhere to sit. I was on my feet the whole time. I don't do well standing on my feet for that long. By the time we got through customs, I was pretty much a walking zombie. |
The next feat was to find our luggage and wend our way over to the Southwest area. 20 or so hours of no sleep + over heating in a crowded, muggy, smelly room + standing on one's feet for two hours + trying to find your luggage = disaster.
We couldn't find our luggage for love nor money. My dad was waiting at the baggage carousel and I had noticed a big pile of luggage sitting off to the side, two airport employee's were standing at the head of the carousel, taking off luggage and setting it aside in this pile. I went and looked through the pile, but did not see any of our luggage. Now mind you, we had been hunting for our luggage for a good 15 minutes by this point. So, I wandered around the luggage carousel in the hopes of....I'm not sure what but I needed to keep moving at this point. I saw a suitcase that looked just like mine, but it had Air France tags on it. I wandered up the other side of the baggage carousel and back to where I started from. And to my surprise, I found our luggage, it had somehow found it's way into the pile of luggage that those guys were pulling off the belt. At this point I was starting to wonder if I was getting delirious or something. Come to find out, the guys were pulling off all of the Priority First Class bags and setting them off to the side, I guess in an attempt to make things nice for us so we wouldn't have to hassle with getting them off the carousel. I don't know. All I know is that I was way beyond tired and very sore from standing so long. All I wanted was to find a place to sit before I fell down.
I got my dad's attention and we started collecting all of our luggage. We had a mess of luggage, between the three of us we had 8 pieces of luggage (that includes our carry-on's). One should never try to collect a lot of luggage when one's brain is shut off. I swear we got all of the luggage that was there. Whether we missed one or the guys hadn't taken the last one off the belt yet, I don't know. All I know is all three of us saw that we had a huge pile of luggage and took off for the Southwest ticket counter.......
We did our pre-check and figured that we would go ahead and check our luggage so we could just go straight back to the terminals and wait. So, we went to the nifty self check-in Kiosk and printed out the tags for our luggage. We scratched our heads for a bit when we ended up having an extra tag. And then we realized we were one suitcase short. Of course panic sets in. We knew for a FACT that we had checked ALL of the luggage in Dubai. Now the question was, did they lose one of our suitcases or did we leave one behind at the luggage carousel?
My mom and I found somewhere to sit while my dad made the trek all the way back over to the international gates. They wouldn't let him back through security to go looking for the suitcase and he wasn't getting much help from anyone in helping him track down the lost bag either. The really tragic thing about this is the lost suitcase was the one that had the majority of the souvenirs in it. My heart was just sinking. I said a quick prayer, texted Nathan and asked him to pray, and put a plea out on Facebook for prayers.......
Miracles DO happen and prayers DO get answered. Not more than a few minutes after my Facebook plea for prayers, my dad called to say he had the missing piece of luggage and was on his way back. I almost cried tears of joy, I think the only reason I didn't was because I was way too tired to consider doing it.
As it turns out, my dad got zero help or concern from the "good people" at the San Francisco airport. He was getting desperate and frustrated. Without any help or recourse, he decided to go check the Emirates ticket counter. At first he was dismayed when he saw that they were all closed up because the return flight to Dubai was getting ready to depart. As miracles go, he saw one person left doing the final closing up at the ticket counters. He went over and told her our story. She, without hesitation, got right on it. She said she would see what she could do. She was able to track down our missing piece of luggage and bring it out to my dad. We either missed it when we were getting our luggage or it hadn't come off the belt yet, either way, it was a relief to have it found safe and sound. I hope that wherever that lady is, that Heavenly Father is pouring down buckets of blessings on her. She truly was an answer to prayers.
Once that drama was done and ALL of our luggage was checked, the next part of the drama began......
Our flight was supposed to leave at 7 pm.......Our shoulders slumped when we looked at the departure board and saw that it had been delayed by an hour!! That was so not fun!! I was sorely tempted to find a spot of floor and lay down, but it was way too crowded for that. I tried to sleep in the seats, but that just wasn't happening. I think I might have dozed off for five minutes, but then thankfully my dad said that it was time to board the plane.
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| The lights are one, but nobody is home. I honestly don't know how I was even functioning at this point!! |
So we had to fly from San Francisco to Burbank. Thankfully we didn't have to change planes or even get off the plane. We did a quick stop to unload some people and load some more on. Then from Burbank to Salt Lake. Those flights, to me, seemed much longer than the 16 hour flight on Emirates.
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| I fell asleep during the flight to Burbank. I remember taking off and the next thing I knew, we were landing. |
I tried really hard to sleep on the flight from Burbank to Salt Lake, but couldn't sleep very well because I was way too tired and anxious to be done with our long long LONG day
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| YAY!! Starting our descent into Salt Lake!! |
It was so very nice to crawl into my own comfy bed and fall fast asleep. Jet Lag is not fun. It took me about three days to get back to feeling normal again. The reality of losing Mighty Mouse hit me the next day, that was really hard. I think it was one of the strangest I have ever felt in my life. I don't think I can begin to describe what it was like. Lost, lost is the word that comes to mind. It took a good three days for that to go away.
Well, that's it, we have come to the end of my journey. It was an experience of a lifetime. I guess I shall see you all again when I write my 2018 year in review blog posts. Until then!!
