Emirates Airline & Harbor Hotel in Dubai

I'm a very loyal Continental customer, but unfortunately they do not fly to South Africa. I'd heard many good things about Emirates & was also curious to see what all the fuss about Dubai was about, so we decided to fly Emirates Airlines. Their entire fleet is wide-body planes & they had daily flights from Dubai to Houston, Cape Town & Mauritius.



They have just finished major renovations (building) on the Dubai airport and it too exemplifies everything Dubai- large, grand, opulent & beautiful.



Indoor zen gardens with a pond & live trees were a nice break from the TONS of high-end retail shops and dozens of duty-free stores that lined the main terminal hallway. There were plenty of seats to sit, a McDonalds, free wi-fi and lots of power stations to charge batteries.



It's hard to tell in the photo, but these are 3 of the biggest & most beautiful elevators I've ever seen in my life. You could easily fit a large SUV inside of them & they moved dozens of people at a time up and down- the engineer in me was fascinated.



Not to mention this enormous waterfall- it had to be several stories tall and nearly 100 feet wide.



I will have to give a very big thanks to the airlines because we were upgraded to business class on the way to Dubai. Due to a screw up, H didn't have an assigned seat on the plane & so we had to wait until every.single.person checked in, but it was SOOOOOO worth it! We thought we'd won the lottery to be living like kings up there! You can obviously tell how excited my silly husband was- he could put up the wall between us, watch a big 'ol TV screen in front of him, use the noise cancelling headphones, play with the portable TV/remote touchscreen monitor, lie almost flat in the seat & otherwise be big pimping!



We got very spoiled and it hurt- hurt badly those other 41 hours we had to spend back in coach on our other flights! I had plenty of room to work on my computer & get our yearly photo album done since February, used real pillow & a fancy blanket, drank the wine & ate good food. It was an awesome way to start out our trip.



See me & hubby in the reflection? Anyway, we stayed at The Harbour Hotel (which is owned by Emirates Airline) in the marina area of Dubai and was selected by our travel agent. We had a full suite with a large living & dining room that we didn't use in our 36 hour stay on the 28th floor.



Complete with a stainless steel kitchen, which I only use to cool my water bottles.



Breakfast was included in our room rate, but for an extra $20 or so, they'd deliver it as room service, which was a very nice perk. We obviously got a TON of food & it was all very yummy.



We had a super-swank bedroom with lots of fluffy pillows and soft sheets, plus a great TV and Internet access. We enjoyed a wonderful view of Palm Jumeirah & the marina area out our bedroom window.



We were somehow upgraded to a 2 bedroom (plus it had an extra small, sparse room with a cot) that went totally unused. We attempted to use the small washer & dryer in the unit, but didn't have too much luck with that endeavor. All in all, wonderful hotel, great service & enjoyable stay.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: The painting we bought in South Africa arrive here today- I wasn't sure it was going to make it in the mail.