We allowed ourselves to sleep in, in order to adjust to UAE local time which will hit us tonight. That didn’t quite work as we still woke around 0715. We had breakfast at our now “regular” place and went shopping. There was little that I needed but it’s always nice to be tempted; we looked at some winter gear and sandals. In the end we ended up with some gifts for the grand nieces/nephews.
We popped back to the hotel briefly before coming out for lunch then back to the hotel to get ready. I had arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 1500 and he turned up slightly before. We got to the airport just before the counters opened. We were asked to progress to the second in the queue ahead of the labourers. Even that wasn’t that fast but we were given our boarding passes straight away despite holding standby tickets.
We went up to the lounge for about 90 minutes before descending to board the Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi. We saw the crew boarding ahead of us and they looked really smart in their uniforms complete with leather gloves.
We had been given the exit row being on staff tickets but we moved to the last row so we could have a seat in between us. It turned out to be a good thing as we noticed during the flight the forward section was like an oven (probably due to a ventilation fault). Dinner was served very efficiently and the service completed swiftly. A little after, the crew brought down some fruit, chocolates and Arab sweets from Business Class because they knew we were on staff tickets; that was a very nice touch.
We taxied forever once we touched down at Abu Dhabi before disembarking at a remote gate. The crew had also given us Fast-track immigration passes. That was painfully slow so I’d hate to think what it would be like at the normal queue.
When I got to the front, the officer processed me halfway and asked me to go to his colleague. Then he closed up shop! None of the staff were exactly pleasant which is a pity considering the emirate is trying to promote itself to tourism.
We taxied to the Park Rotana Hotel which we had booked for USD65 through a website I had never used called Travelpony. Other sites were charging around USD90. It was a classy joint and was an absolute steal at that price!