The chaos
Airports are always chaos but Doha is a special kind of chaos, masses of passengers of every conceivable state of dress all wandering in random directions, security screening not involving a little plastic bag of liquids, come to think of it there was no request for the bag in Berlin either... one of the security guards managed to tell me " this is not America" and the other was laughing when I asked "Schuhe? " nein "Jacke? " ya then she asked me in German if I had anything like drinks in my case. Now it's 35 years since I studied German but I was able to pick up enough words to answer.... Triumph!
Also chaos caused by the car hire company Alamo refusing my rental because I don't carry a credit card, handing my licence back to me and telling me to get a refund through Expedia. Their job done but leaving me with no car....
The Calm
Getting onto the plane the cabin crew greeter gave one of the others a nod and I was escorted to my seat, greeted and offered drinks, cold towel, menu, pajamas, gift bag. Terribly polite and I felt a bit scruffy suddenly ( I wasn't by the way, I was dressed smartly for a change)
After an hour of chatting to the crazy girl next to me I managed to get some sleep and woke just before landing having only consumes a modicum of gin!
The next flight was the same, greeted, menu,drink, calm and a brief snooze before landing in Dubai.
I had intended to have a drive round before going to the hotel but Alamo had other ideas so I queued for a taxi and was directed to the pink taxi service for women.
I'm not a taxi fan but needs must. 90AED from the airport was nearly a third of the car hire for the whole week but at least I was there and after a brief wait, the lovely staff let me have my room early and I tried to sleep off the headache.
It was getting late when I woke up and I toddled off to the Mall of the Emirates, I'm not a big fan of expensive and designer shopping but it was interesting to see the mix of UK,US and other brands, Debenham, Marks and Spencer, Carrefour- that's a French brand supermarket selling normal supermarket stuff in the midst of all the designer stuff!
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