As I'm sure you know, Tony and I have been away for a few weeks. Our long-awaited trip to the Isle of Man has now been and gone.
It was a very emotional trip, with many wanders down memory lane. Far too much happened to squeeze it all into one blog post, so here is the first of several.
We left Timaru on Saturday lunchtime. The sun was shining – what a beautiful start to the trip.
We flew from Christchurch to Sydney, then onwards to Dubai aboard an Airbus A380. It is a truly enormous aircraft, making the Sydney to Dubai flight in about 14 hours.
We had a long layover in Dubai – 20 hours on the ground. Emirates gifted us a complimentary hotel room and meal so that we could freshen up and get some sleep. What a wonderful thing to do.
We certainly tried to sleep, but it just wasn't happening. Instead, we decided to head out and explore a little.
One of the cabin crew had suggested Dubai Mall, easily reached by metro. Out we stepped into 44°C heat!
Phew... it was hot.
Luckily, the metro station was only an eight-minute walk from the hotel. It was blissful to be back inside in the air conditioning. After only a short wait, the next train arrived. It cost us pennies to make the 35-minute journey to the Burj Khalifa station.
From there we took a 15-minute walk through air-conditioned tunnels to the shopping mall. Looking out of the windows along the way, I was struck by just how clean the city is. Not just the city itself, but the metro stations, the trains, the tunnels, the mall... everything was spotlessly clean and maintained at a wonderfully comfortable temperature.
The mall itself was vast. That may be perfectly normal for some people, but for a Manx/Kiwi like me, whose experience has mostly been of much smaller places, it was quite a culture shock.
Arriving fairly early in the day, many of the shops were only just opening. Cafés were setting up for breakfast and brunch. I was fascinated by some of the clientele.
We wandered around simply taking it all in.
The UAE may be a desert nation, but it certainly isn't short of water. Everywhere we looked there were beautiful water features. I imagine they also help cool the surrounding air.
This tea shop completely fascinated me. Who knew there were so many different kinds of tea?
I'd read somewhere that there was an aquarium in the mall, and sure enough, we found it.
We didn't even need to pay to see the fish. A huge three-story-high wall of glass lets shoppers peer into an enormous aquarium... right there, opposite The Cheesecake Factory.
Guess where we stopped for an early lunch?
After eating a huge meal, I wandered back to the aquarium and took far too many photos. I was determined to get a decent picture of this fellow.
We also spotted another rather interesting group of people enjoying brunch at one of the cafés.
On our way back to the metro station we spotted a very familiar name...
Marks & Spencer.
Back at the hotel we again failed to sleep for more than an hour. Jet lag clearly had other ideas for us.
So, after activating our complimentary SIM cards, Tony did all the technical wizardry and set up a hotspot from the phone so we could connect a laptop and cast a movie to the hotel TV. Before long we were properly settled in, watching Netflix and trying to get in another snooze.
We stayed there until it was time for supper, a ride back to the airport, and yet another flight on our way to the Isle of Man.
This time we flew on a smaller Boeing 777 to Manchester, where it was cool and damp – quite a contrast to Dubai!
Once there we managed to get ourselves onto an earlier flight to the Isle of Man. We had originally been booked on the 5.40 p.m. flight but instead managed to leave around lunchtime.
It turned out to be a very good decision.
Fog had settled around the island and several flights had already been unable to land, returning to where they had come from instead.
The flight we eventually boarded had left Glasgow half empty, so it was diverted to Manchester to collect more passengers rather than have two half-empty aircraft flying the same route.
Normally, the flight to the Isle of Man takes about 40 minutes.
Ours took just 25.
There was still plenty of fog, but our pilot found a hole in it... and dropped us neatly through.
We were the last plane to land that day as the fog became thicker.
My brother Andy and his wife Angie were there to meet us.
All of our luggage wasn't.
Tony's suitcase had somehow decided to stay behind in Manchester. Thankfully, it caught up with us the following day.
Did I mention that it is now Monday lunchtime on the Isle of Man, so Almost midnight, Monday in New Zealand?
I have to say, after twelve years of living in New Zealand, the Isle of Man's roads felt incredibly narrow!
I’ll be back soon with another instalment. It may not be the most exciting read for everyone, but I do like to keep a record of our journey for us to look back on.
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