Our Trip Home to Cape Town: Part 2.

This is a continuation from my last post about our flights back from the United States to South Africa. Again, I love taking pictures from airplanes, so be prepared!

The windows of the Dubai airport are beautiful.

 When we arrived in Dubai, we had to check in AGAIN, and were able to get seats next to each other. The part of the airport we were in was pretty desolate at that time, so we changed clothes in the bathroom and freshened up (a new strategy put in place after we realized how stinky my husband got on the way to Denver).

There is a huge garden and pond in the airport.

Rush hour: is at 3 a.m.!! Duty Free shopping never ends here.

They are apparently obsessed with Tang.

Kraft cheddar cheese.

We had to wait a long time for our 3:50 a.m. flight and luckily learned that if you have a layover longer than six hours, you are given a voucher for a free drink and meal.  A few other nice things about the Dubai airport is that they provide free strollers and small shopping carts- for the duty free shopping, but everyone uses them to cart their carry-on luggage also. The bathrooms- there are apparently two different types, the “western” and the “eastern” which have different toilets (or none at all, just holes in the ground) and bidet hoses.

The men's "eastern" bathroom. Picture from the hubs- he was a little freaked out and had to document it.

We laid on the lounge chairs, used the free wifi there, and tried to sleep. We got a little annoyed with each other, but it didn’t last long. I thought that was pretty good for as long as we had to travel! We grabbed a quick mocha coffee and then went to the desk to check in.

Me, tired and lounging.

They notified us that we had been upgraded to business class! Then we felt REALLY lucky! We were trying not to smile too big or give them cause to double check and take it all away as a mistake. We were given champagne before takeoff and our orders were taken for breakfast. We loved the way the seats reclined and how big the screens were.

The champagne. Nuf said.

The Leg Room changed my life.

Dubai lights.

Emirates's ceilings have constellation lights.

 The bathrooms had fresh flowers and free combs, toothbrushes, etc. The food was mostly good and I loved the different courses. The only unfortunate thing was that the screen system needed to be re-set twice.

Fresh orchids in the bathroom. Necessary?

Mmm.  Can you say warm croissant?

Breakfast of cheese souffle with vegetables.

Lunch's Salmon Pastrami appetizer.

Godiva chocolates and traditional Arabic Desserts of pistachio green mafourkeh and creamy halawet al jibin. Forgot to take a picture of  the braised beef tenderloin I had for lunch

I stayed alert for most of the flight, so I was awake for the most amazing sunrise. I’ve never seen colors like that, with the horizon seemingly to never end. 

Amazing sunrise.

And then we were back under the clouds and flying over South Africa. It was beautiful! Seeing the green farmland and tall mountains was inspiring.

"Cotton ball" clouds.

Doesn't the farmland look like Colorado's?!

 Finally, I saw the blue-green ocean and the majestic shape of Table Mountain, and I knew... 

False Bay is amazingly beautiful.

I was home.

Table Mountain hiding behind the "table cloth" of clouds.

Song of the Post: Before I Knew by Basia Bulat. Some of you may recognize this from a Subaru commercial int he USA.

The audio on this version is great, the video not as much.

The video is better in this one, music is stylistically different. You choose.