Distance to DUBAU 1032 miles
We left Paris this morning after a brief but fun visit - we’re currently on a plane to Dubai. Lynn and I arrived from our mountain bike trip yesterday afternoon and met up with Brett and Theresa. After dropping off bags, we headed out to Sacré Cœur (cool church) in the Montmarte district of Paris. For folks that have never been, it’s a pretty cool area to visit since it has the church, lots of street artists and it at a very high elevation affording you a great view over all of Paris.
For dinner, we endured “major wallet damage” in exchange for some great French food (and French service too!) at Les Relais de Louis XIV (the place of Louis 14th). Brett proved his genius by picking out a great wine - his method? Second cheapest on the menu 
Let’s just say that it was a fraction of the price of the most expensive at EU 1200! Ouch, I can’t imagine…
After dinner, we took a great walk out to the Eiffel tower, walking by Les Infidels and saw the tower lit up in all it’s glory.
Imagine the shocker this morning when my phone rang at 6am only to hear “Maaaattttteee, T and I are wide awake and thinking of going for a run”. It’s never a dull moment traveling with Brett. We all dragged ourselves up and out running around Paris for almost an hour zooming by the Louvre, up the Champs Elysées, poking around the Arc de Triumph before heading back to the hotel. If you’ve experienced Paris before with crowds, I totally recommend walking (or running :-)) around the city at 7am. It’s completely quiet and a different place. Yeah!
Right now, we’re somewhere over the middle east enjoying the luxury of Emirates biz class. It’s quite eerie - according to the in flight map channel, we’re exactly 1032 miles from our destination. I’m thankful that our flight is very carefully skirting around the Iraq! When I first started planning this trip, it never occurred to me that we’d be so close the Iraq. Now that we’re in flight, it’s real food for thought!
Emirates is a great airline - if you’re flying biz class, they’ll collect you via limo and drive you to/from the airport. The lounge was great with awesome food and a full bar. The flight has been very smooth and comfortable with awesome food and service (thanks Charlie!). Best of all, the in flight TV system has 500+ channels of goodies to keep us busy. I’m sure this will be useful given all the time we’re flying later in the trip.
Anyway, Dubai promises to be quite interesting. It’s primarily a vacation resort for many Europeans with something like 90% of the population being foreign nationals. I’m hoping to investigate the “old town” spice and fish markets. Lynn also has an old friend here that she’s hoping to track down.
Goodbye Europe, welcome to the middle east…
Nige.