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Published: August 29th 2018
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Wow! Well, the flight from Sydney to Dubai on Emirates was uneventful. We had a woman say “oh look, you’re on our tour” because we still use our Bunniks luggage straps from however many years ago! We explained that no, we were not going to Morocco with her.
We had one of those escape rows on the plane, just across from the babies, and weren’t they gorgeous? Two little boys, fraternal twins aged 8 months. They were so happy and placid. One was a redhead (Patrick) and the other dark haired (Finn) - off to Ireland to meet one set of grandparents for the first time. Very exciting. There was also a girl travelling alone with a wedding dress in a big bag. She was wearing an ivory velvet tracksuit (over which I would’ve spilt everything) and some gorgeous Coco Chanel shoes! Don’t you wonder at the hidden stories?
The food was quite good on Emirates - smoked salmon salad as an entree, Persian style braised lamb (with buttered orzo and sautéed vegies) with spiced orange mousse and raspberry coullis for dessert. Also cheese and crackers. In the middle of the night (I think), they served a lamb pide.
Brekky was a cheese omelette with a chicken chipolata, creamed spinach and roasted potatoes. When we boarded the next flight in Dubai, it was still breakfast! So we had a continental cold plate of pistachio chicken, Red Leicester cheese and crudités. This was followed sometime later by lunch - a delicious quinoa salad with bocconcini, followed by a wonderful grilled salmon fillet with saffron rice and veges, with a yummy choc mousse for dessert.
Our flight to Stockholm was interesting - we flew due north between the Caspian and Black seas, and then turned left at Moscow. There were some beautiful snow capped mountains along the way.
Tom has started a tradition over the last couple of years of buying a box of chocs (usually Ferraro Roche, but this time Cadbury’s favourites because they were on special, so long as they’re individually wrapped) and he gives them to the cabin stewards looking after our area, with a little card written by me (and signing with our seat numbers), thanking them for the wonderful job they do. It is always appreciated and they always drop by and thank us, and even on our way off the plane one will
say “ that’s the man who gave us the chocolate). The Syd-Dubai stewards were very appreciative, but the Dubai-Stockholm stewards were really overcome. So many of them dropped by to chat to us and thank us, and one of them observed ”you’ve really made our day”. I know they’re doing their job, and to us it looks like a pretty good job, but they put up with all sorts of people and their demands, and are otherwise invisible. How easy is it to make someone’s day? The Dubai-Stockholm stewards even wrote out a card in their own languages and took an instant photo of us as a keepsake! Such lovely people!
When we arrived at Stockholm it took us over an hour to get to luggage claim. I don’t think passport control were expecting any planes in. There was our flight, and a flight from Chicago, with 4 people processing the passports. People started getting out of their lines and trying to merge where they didn’t belong. It almost came to fisticuffs, with lots of shouting, swearing and yelling. Security was called, but so were two more border control officers, so we got some more lines, thank heavens. Such
a schemozzle!
We finally made it to outside the terminal where we easily found our coach for the transfer into the bus terminal in the city which was close to our hotel. The coach had wifi and USB hubs to charge your phone!
Dinner?? Well, we went around the corner and came across a Pizza Hut. So tired, so travel weary - that’ll do us!! And alcohol? Jacobs Creek was all over it!!!
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