Dubai trip 1: on the airplane

Exactly a week ago, on March 11^th, I boarded an Emirates flight direct from Casablanca to Dubai, off to TESOL Arabia—a large English language teaching conference in the region. I was really excited to be going on my first real “business trip” and had high hopes for the stay. Happily, I was not disappointed! I’ll be writing three posts on the trip—this one, another about Dubai the city and the last about the conference itself.

Flying with Emirates was a great experience. Though I fly quite a bit I usually pay for my own tickets, meaning I go with the cheapest option. Iberia, Royal Air Maroc and most American airlines leave much to be desired when it comes to points for “experience.” You get what you pay for with those, and with Emirates the same is true. From the start the flight attendants were very helpful, and as we were seated, before we even lifted off the flight attendants handed out hot hand towels. (Not sure what the point of that is other than to say "hey you should like flying with us," but I guess it worked on me!)

On the way back we ended up being delayed almost an hour but the pilot kept us informed with regular updates, and the AC was kept on and the staff was so attentive (and the passengers so tired, seeing as most of us were at the airport before 6 am) that no one really got upset about the delay. Behind each seat was an HD touch screen with tons of things to watch, including brand new movies. The screens also never turned off, meaning before we lifted off and up until we got off the plane we could keep watching, which also made for happy passengers during the delay I think. 

I'm not a great flier— I get nervous at the slightest delay or bump out of the ordinary, I have an awful time sleeping even though I can usually curl up nicely, my skin gets super dry and uncomfortable, and my ears and head hurt a lot during flights— so anything to make the flight more comfortable is greatly appreciated!

During the flights I captured a few nice scenes out the window:

Interesting mountains and a lake in 

the north of Morocco

A cute island close to a town somewhere in Algeria

Pretty clouds over the Mediterranean;
they were a lot more pink than the
picture shows, but they’re still cute. 

Sunset

On the way back, the Moroccan countryside greeted us with green fields and 

lots of wildflowers! At least I assume those yellow and orange areas are covered 

in wildflowers— every few months the colors of the ubiquitous wildflowers change, 

and right now they’re that exact orange and yellow. I boosted the contrast 
before posting this, but it was only to make up for what got lost with the window 
and  the atmosphere— the colors really are that bright.

On the way to Dubai we skirted the southern coast of the Mediterranean the whole time, whereas on the way back we flew over Turkey and the bottom of Italy’s boot, before heading over the water after flying over Sicily. Turkey was full of white capped mountains and the Italian countryside was very picturesque, even from that high up, but I was dozing the whole trip and my sleepy brain didn’t think of getting out the camera. Oops.