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June 07: Etihad Airways by Greg Lindsay |
IN TRANSIT: ABU DHABI -- I had the good fortune of flying to the Gulf aboard Etihad, the UAE's #2 airline (and, like Avis, they try harder). Etihad was Abu Dhabi's response back in 2003, when Dubai's Emirates was already well on its way to world domination. I was lucky enough to be upgraded to Pearl (i.e. Business) class for the 14-hour non-stop to Abu Dhabi, which included one of the softest, 180-degree lie-flat beds I've ever slept on at 36,000 ft. Emirates may be serving New York with three flights a day, and Qatar Airways may have just started service (via a stopover in Geneva, which means your sleeping patterns have more time to adjust, I guess), but I arrived on Etihad with one of the milder cases of jet lag I've ever known. We'll see how I do in coach on the way back -- a 2 AM departure, and an 8:30 AM arrival. Ugh.
IN TRANSIT: DUBAI -- Sorry for the light (read: nonexistent) posting schedule. I've been in the Arabian (sorry: "Persian") Gulf region for the past week already, hop-scotching from Dubai, to Doha (the capital of Qatar) to Abu Dhabi (the capital of the United Arab Emirates, not that you'd ever know it with Dubai glittering nearby so brightly. I'll be doing my best the rest of this week to get caught up, starting with a few photos. The tower to your left is the Burj Dubai, rising above the smaller towers of the "Old Town" development that surrounds the Burj itself. An example of typically witty Dubai real estate humor is to dryly mention that "the Old Town isn't finished yet." Get it? BTW, the Burj Dubai itself will cost $1 billion to build, while the complete 500 acre development (which includes the Dubai Mall, the world's largest) will cost a cool $20 billion. As you'll see, that's merely the ante for building in Dubai.
