My Journey: Abu Dhabi: Arrived

Well it's been a few days now since I made a post in the blog. As most people who know me are aware, I finally received the ticket for Abu Dhabi earlier this week. It was a bit of a rush in the end trying to get everything done in time for the flight, but I think that I managed to do a pretty decent job. I think I said my final goodbyes about 15 times, and I appreciate all of your patience in this process.

So here's a bit of a rundown of the past few days......

1) I received an e-mail on Tuesday morning telling me to monitor my e-mail for the infamous e-ticket.

2) I waited all day long for the ticket to arrive, but no luck. Finally, I called the travel agency and had a ticket within 4 minutes.

3) Had several goodbye dinners / breakfasts / lunches.

4) Packed up personal effects in the apartment and finished packing my bags.

5) Canceled everything that I needed to cancel.

So Thursday finally came around, and I prepared all of the last minute things that one would expect. Around 6:45 the limo came to the apartment, and my friend Rey accompanied me to the airport. We were there relatively quickly despite the ongoing construction on the Gardner Expressway (not going to miss that). Just after arriving at the airport I checked my bags. Rey and I were going to have some dinner, but there really wasn't anything available before the security check point so I told Rey to just go home and I made my way through the most thorough security screening I have ever been through. It was tough to say goodbye there as the reality had fully sunk in at that point.

The flight itself was rather uneventful, but dreadfully long. I enjoyed the excellent customer service and highly edited movies that were shown for the 13 hour flight. I tried my best to stay awake for the duration of the flight but I do think that I fell asleep a couple of times for less than 10 minutes at a time. I told myself I would be able to sleep at night if I did it this way, and for the most part I did.

In landing at Abu Dhabi we were hurled through several different lines until we could get on a bus that would take us to our hotel. Unfortunately, it looks like I have entered on a 30 day tourist visa, and will have to wait for my paperwork to fully process before I can move through the rest of the process.

The hotel that we were taken to is called Aloft. It's a Starwood hotel (think Sheridan), and it's really quite nice and new. The rooms aren't quite as posh as some of the others that I've seen online but I am not going to complain. There is free internet, the room is clean, the tv is large and I am quite comfortable.

Below are some pictures from the hotel. . . I haven't taken any yet, so these are "borrowed". I need to buy some new batteries. The rooms here are all virtually identical.