Review – Le Meridien, Dubai.

After the 15 minutes bus ride from our remote parked aircraft I decided it was worth going to the hotel for a few hours, as I needed more sleep and it anyways would be a way to keep the kids busy while we were waiting for our onward flight to Norway.

• Introduction – Christmas is Norway 2019
• Emirates Boeing 777ER Clark – Dubai business class
• Stopover in Dubai at Le Meridien
• Emirates Boeing 777ER Dubai – Oslo business class
• Christmas holiday in Norway
• Radisson Blu, Gardermoen, Norway
• Emirates Boeing 777ER Oslo – Dubai business class
• Emirates Boeing 777ER Dubai – Cebu business class
• Emirates Boeing 777ER Cebu – Clark business class

Arriving in the transit area I asked a friendly costumer service representative where we should go, and he advised us to go through immigration and to the Emirates Chauffeur Service, and they would help us. We quickly located the immigration, and surprisingly there was no line there, and we were through in no time. From there it was a few minutes walk to the Emirates chauffeur service, and only 2 people waiting in front of us.

The kids were happy to sit and wait, while I spoke to the person behond the counter, and upon presenting our hotel vouched she quickly arranged for a car for us, and as were escored outside to the fleet of waiting Emirates cars. The ride to the hotel was no more than 5 minutes, and we arrived there around 01:30.

During our check-in to the room the receptionist checked onward flight time, and arranged for a car to pick us up again at 05:45 for our 07:40 departure. Apparently in the hotel deal they also offered a free breakfast buffet, but as it only opened at 06:00 we were not able to enjoy that.

We were staying in a wing in the hotel where everything was labeled Emirates, so I believe all rooms in this wing was for transit costumers – in which case I was a bit surprised that they did not have a 24-hours buffet, as their costumers would be arriiving and departing at all kinds of strange hours.

Anyways, we located out room on the 2nd floor (there was no lift, we had to take the stairs), and the room was nice enough, a fairly standard approx 30 square meters room with a large double bed, office desk, and a nice bathroom with both a bathtub and a shower.

After a short discussion with the kids who rather wanted to watch Ipad than sleep we did go to bed, and managed to get a good 3 hour sleep before it was time to wake up again.

Three hours might not sound like a lot, but it made wonders for me on this trip – traveling for so many hours straight from a nightshift is really good, and I felt refreshed and awake after I woke up and had a shower and a shave. Comparing this to having to spend 6 hours in the transit area of the airport in the middle of the night with a 5 and a 6 years old is almost priceless.

Check-out was done quickly, but there was some confusion about the car service, so there was no car waiting for us to go back to the airport. One Emirates Chaffeur car pulled up with 2 guests for the hotel, and the driver did agree to bring us to the airport, even though he was supposed to pick up some other guests at the hotel instead. With the airport only 5 minutes away he said he should be able to make it back to them before they would even miss him – he was a really nice guy so I hope he was right 😀

Arriving at the airport we cleared immigration again quickly, and were at our gate 90 minutes before departure time, so I decided to bring the kids to McDonalds for something to eat as they didn’t have breakfast yet, and most likely would not enjoy the plane food too much. After Alexhandra had finished her 4 nuggets and Marcus had 3 cheese burgers we headed back to the gate, where boarding was just starting.