Round The World and other travels

A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries

This is: Indian Ocean 2012

To the Gulf

  I got up at 0645 in order to ensure that I was ready for the start of breakfast service at 0730. My first meal of the day was of necessity a quick one: it was all over in twenty minutes. I returned to my room for a final quick pack and abandoned my first accommodation of the trip minutes after 0800.

It was an easy walk round to the Nils Ericson bus terminal in the bright morning sunshine and fresh air, despite having to cross multiple sets of deserted tram tracks with my case in tow.

The 0830 bus to Landvetter proved to be rather busy, which is more than could be said for the terminal itself.
ABOVE: Nils Ericson bus terminal on a quiet Sunday morning  
 
On arrival at the airport, I checked in via the empty Lufthansa premium line, went upstairs to Security and quickly found the attractive SAS lounge. Overall, it struck me as being a nice little airport. As I enjoyed a few nibbles in the lounge, I reminded myself what had brought me to this part of the world in the first place: the delightfully arcane redemption rules of bmi Diamond Club, soon to be no more.   With journeys from Sweden to the Gulf region - and there were many more examples - requiring significantly fewer miles than the equivalent journey ex-UK, it frequently made sense to save some of those valuable miles for another day.
  
ABOVE: SAS Lounge and main entrance, Gothenburg Landvetter

With Gate 17 being adjacent to the lounge, I had good views of the aircraft's arrival - it really couldn't have been handier.

(Link to flight log in side panel)

As I negotiated the familiar, yet somehow always rather daunting, miles of corridors in Frankfurt Airport, I tried to exchange a few texts with Bruce. Yes, it was time for our paths to converge again in some far-flung part of the world - or Frankfurt, in this case - at the start of another memorable adventure. In this instance the overlap in our respective itineraries would be less than a week, but nobody was thinking about that at this stage. We had agreed to meet up in the new Senator Lounge by the B gates, but I had noticed that our Dubai flight was leaving from a C gate - hence the text messages.

  I took a walk around the lounge and finally met my friend as I was about to complete the circuit and arrive back at the door. As the lounge was extremely busy and as we were due to depart from a C gate, we once more took to the corridors and relocated to the much quieter Senator Lounge in the C zone. We had a drink and a nibble, but time seemed to pass very quickly and soon we had to head for the gate.    
ABOVE: Premium passenger bewilderment at Frankfurt (iPhone photo) ABOVE: Lufthansa Senator Lounge (C gates)

 The gate area was surprisingly deserted-looking, as most people seemed to be on board already! Two jetties were in use; we took the one leading to Door 1L and made the celebrated left turn into the 747's nose cone.

(Link to flight log in side panel)

Immigration queues in Dubai were bad enough, though hardly the worst I'd ever seen. The advantage, as ever, was that my baggage was already on the belt when we got there. We managed to spot the Sheraton agent in the serried ranks of 'meet & greet' people waiting outside - how nice of them to throw in complimentary airport transfers for our cash + points booking!   It was a pleasant, 15-minute transfer to the hotel in our air-conditioned car. We had an easy check-in and quickly settled into our 7th-floor room with creek view, although this was clearly not at its best at this time of night. We wasted no time in unpacking a few essentials and settling down to catch up on some sleep. This was especially important for Bruce, after his marathon journey from southern California.