Fly Emirates

Nov. 2, 2008

I received a big present the other day. Gulf Air overbooked my flight on Oct. 30 from Athens to Delhi so they asked me if I could be bumped to another airline and compensated with a free flight between Delhi and Kathmandu. Awesome! Who cares about a six hour layover in Dubai. Free flight to the Himalayas.

I was bumped from Gulf Air to fly Emirates Airlines to Delhi. Now I have never endorsed any product or company in the blog (or formally anywhere else for that matter, as far as I can remember), but I have to say Emirates is the best airline I've ever flown with. The flight attendants are super nice and smiley and wear funny hats with scarves (How Middle Eastern!), they serve food that is tasty, the captain is calm sounding and tells you about your flight, the seats are comfy, and you get your own T.V. with hundreds of movies and lots of different music to listen to.

It may just be that I've been on the road for two months and haven't been near a T.V. that spoke English in a while, but I was positively giddy to learn that I could turn to a channel that showed a live camera feed from under the wings of the plane, and then switch to another channel to watch Estelle and Kanye West's American Boy music video about fifty times in a row.

Oh, and they gave me free wine. And free snacks when I got to Dubai, which, by the way, has a really cool airport. My mom, who last year took a similar flight to India through Dubai, aptly likens the airport there to Mos Eisley Cantina, the bar in Star Wars. (I am not a nerd. I had to Wikipedia the name of that place.) The airport has rocket ships on the ceiling and palm trees along the people-movers and glittering lights everywhere. It's like a casino, mall, space station all rolled into one. I would've taken pictures of the place, but I didn't want to be mistaken for a terrorist.

I napped for several hours on the carpetted floor of the terminal under a line of chairs before boarding my second plane onward to Delhi. That flight was delightfully uneventful and I really have nothing more to say about that. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep humming pop songs.