Hello and Dubai

I've had an interesting travel itinerary to get to India.  I left the SL International Airport on Saturday morning at 10:05 a.m. and arrived at the Chennai Airport on Wednesday at 2:15 a.m. Yep!  That's right - nearly 4 entire days to get to India.

The first leg of my trip was SLC to JFK - I arrived at JFK and had about a 4 hour layover. My boss had told me "you have to go to China Grille while you are in NYC".  Why not - I have 4 hours to blow!  So - I took a cab $60 each way ($45 +tolls and tips) into Manhattan and ate at the China Grille!  It was awesome!  I arrived back at JFK about 2 hours later -and much to my surprise the Departure board on the flight to Dubai said "Delayed - Next Day". 

I had to check into a hotel that night - which was 1000x better than sleeping on the floor in the airport (which many many other people did). 

I got back to the airport at 5:00 the next morning, and my flight left about 8:30 a.m. Unfortunately tho - this little delay meant that I could not leave Dubai for Chennai until 9:00 p.m. the next night, which meant I had an 18 hour layover in Dubai.  

The trip from JFK to Dubai was a 12 hour plane ride... Luckily I slept for the first 6, then watched "Enchanted and Juno" and about 6 episodes of friends, ate dinner (gross) read two

people magazines, fell back asleep, woke up and it was time to land.  

(BTW - I had a mom and her 3 year old daughter sitting next to me... let me just say this..

Moms - if you are taking your 3 year old child on a 12.5 hour plane ride... bring a freakin' book, puzzle, toy, whateva".)

Arrival in Dubai - again another check in at a hotel - but now I'm in the Middle East! How exotic.  So many Shieks - so little time!  I LOVED THE SHIEKS!  I saw about a million of them! It's illegal to take their picture, so I had to sort of pretend I was taking a picture of something else and they just happened to be in the way.  

After we checked in  - we went to the mall.  (we in this story = me and a guy I work with) The best part of this trip was coming back from the mall (not the mall itself).  We had to take a taxi to and from the mall, and when we went to catch a taxi to take us back to our hotel they told us that we had to go inside and there is an area where you pick up the taxi.  So - we got to the "taxi area" and we saw a line.  We were like "dang it" because there were about 15 people in line ahead of us.  What we didn't know was at the end of the line - the line turned...  This picture is the "actual line" - not the fake 15 people line.  There were about 400 people (not an exaggeration) in the taxi line.  We waited exactly 1 hour and 15 minutes to catch a cab for a taxi.

Hello, Hello... I don't know why you say Dubai - I say Hello!