For the first time in my life, I was concerned about New Year’s travel in advance. Usually, if it worked out, we would “hop on the departing bus”, buying tickets at bad prices and already choosing from the leftovers. We booked a cruise on the Persian Gulf with MSC. Our itinerary was as follows: Dubai (UAE)- Abu Dhabi (UAE)-Sir Bani Yas (UAE) – sea – Manama (Bahrain) – Doha (Qatar) – Dubai (UAE) – Dubai (UAE) on the liner Splendida.
The ship went on to Oman, so those wishing to extend their New Year holidays.
We booked our cabin in September, and it was one of the last cabins we booked. We took a cabin equipped for the disabled. It is 2 square metres larger than a similar ordinary cabin, but if a person with disabilities decides to buy a cruise and there are no other cabins available, you can be moved. Such are the rules of the cruise company, you should be ready for it.
Immediately after booking I bought air tickets. Practice shows that by the new year they are sold out very quickly even at robber prices. All direct flights to Dubai were very expensive, so we bought tickets with a long connection in Baku from Azerbaijan Airlines. The connection was 22 hours there and 4 hours back. The tickets included full luggage, good service and a chance to spend a day in a beautiful city. The downside was that the departure and arrival airports were different. There, in Baku, we spent the New Year holidays of 2018 and were satisfied. We were all very much looking forward to encountering the wonderful cuisine of Azerbaijan and planned to visit a restaurant we had not covered on a previous voyage. We immediately booked a small hotel “Passage Boutique Hotel” in the centre for the same small money and plunged into the abyss of everyday life until winter.
Time flew by quickly. In the autumn interval before the new year we had time to stop by in Tai, so the wait was not excruciating))). We took a lot of clothes with us. The oriental dress code forced me to carefully choose clothes for travelling. Also the difference in temperatures added its own extra stack of things: Baku (+6) – Dubai (+25).
I also puzzled over the list of medicines that can be taken with me. The thing is that in the UAE you can’t bring a whole list of medicines that are not banned in our country, for example, paracetamol and its analogues. I scoured a lot of websites looking for clear instructions. I scrambled to put together a first aid kit. In fact, no one checked anything, apparently it is done selectively.
New Year’s Eve meant dressy clothes and shoes, which I also had to carry with me.
The X hour came, and we went to the airport. AZAL (Azerbaijan Airlines) flew out right on time. There was a multimedia system on board, good food, normal distance between seats.
In Baku the weather was bad, it was raining and the wind was blowing hard. We took a taxi for half an hour to get to the city centre and stood in a traffic jam. Some of the streets were blocked for the passage of an important official from Turkey who was visiting Baku on a business trip.
The hotel was disappointing because of the large-scale renovation going on in it. Naturally, nobody warned us in advance, there was no information about it on Booking. Smoking workers were everywhere with tools in dirty clothes, smoke, dust and noise.
The flight to Dubai was virtually uneventful, except for a boy in the next seat coughing profusely. Unfortunately, he infected me and the end of our journey was marred by illness. I came home with a fever and was in bed for days afterwards. His relatives didn’t even think to put a mask on him or at least ask him to cover his mouth with the palm of his hand when he coughed. They were busy arguing and bickering all the way through the flight. Then one of the family members had too much alcohol and started bothering the neighbours with conversations, but they turned out to be Italians and did not understand his drunken friendly speeches. Eventually he fell asleep with the table folded away and snacks spread out on it, no one bothered him on boarding because they just didn’t bother. I don’t know how the whole thing ended and how they unloaded him as he was dead drunk. And how he would pass pass passport control with retinal scanning is a mystery to me. At the airport we took a taxi and in half an hour we were in the port.
