Flight Across the World - stage two to Barcelona

I have four hours on the ground in Dubai airport. And I have some Emirates Skywards points that expire on 31st August which I may as well spend, considering I didn't have enough for an upgrade! I wander about trying to find things to spend them on and settle on a combo of lipstick, camel-milk/pistachio dates and some cashew nuts to munch on. 

On board my new Emirates plane, I have chosen a window seat near the back (a dual arrangement, rather than triple) and settle in for this daytime flight. Which will have views. 

Suddenly my peace is disrupted - a young woman is travelling with her mother and they do not have seats together. Daughter is next to me and mother is in another cabin in an aisle seat. 

"You need to move to this other seat - I want to sit with my mother?" she commands. Actually, no. She is insistent, waving the 37H boarding pass in my face in what can only be described as extreme harassment. I'm an amenable person, but not in this case; I stay put and politely tell her why. 

The young woman is sulking and blaspheming in a language I don't understand. The stewardess comes along and tells the young woman to hold on, she will see what she can do once everyone is on board. The mother slumps down next to me in a flurry of colourful sari and dubious coughing and sneezing. The daughter stands in the aisle, obviously resentful of my stance. I look out the window, sigh and hope the stewardess can find a suitable solution. I silently beg the dreadful coughing to stop but it doesn't. I lean further towards the window, feeling daggers in my side. Daughter is most definitely dark on me. 

A man arrives for his aisle seat across the way - aha, stewardess sees a solution and asks the nice gentleman, as he is about to sit in his allocated seat, if he would kindly transfer to aisle seat 37H. Before he can make up his mind about which aisle seat might be better, the daughter has snaffled his. He shuffles off to 37H without argument, presumably thinking things will be better this way, far from the mother/daughter combo that I am to be lumbered with. 

Daughter sits next to me and buckles in, sparing me more of her mother's close-up sneezing. Mother is across the aisle in the amenable man's seat. Things settle down - although the daughter's disgruntlement is palpable - and we take off, taxiing past fields of Emirates A380s under hazy blue skies. 

Emirates A380s - they'll be back in business on the Auckland to Dubai direct route
from 1st December 2022 - yay!

 

Over the sail-like Burj Al Arab, the spire-like Burj Khalifa and the sprig-like Palm Islands splaying into the Persian Gulf below.

We fly onwards and over the villages of Qaryat Al Ulya in Eastern Province, Saudi-Arabia, with their artificial irrigation circles which look other-worldly from above. 

A freckled landscape over Saudi Arabia

When it is mealtime, there is another flurry of activity ... daughter is swapping with the guy next to her mother, so they can finally be together. Having a handsome young man sitting next to me is a much better state of affairs!! I am watching "Tina" - an exceedingly good doco about Tina Turner's life and music - and he is watching "Dune" (no thanks!) 

He speaks to the stewardess in Spanish to determine whether he wants beef or chicken. I am not sure whether he speaks English but I shall find out at some appropriate point. 

I look out the window at the landscape below and try to work out where we might be. I consult the interactive Flight Info screen - we are over the Peloponnese peninsular of southern Greece, which I backpacked around in the 1980s. Home of Olympia and expanses of olive groves, fishing ports and ancient ruins. We fly over the Rio-Antirrio bridge that crosses the Gulf of Corinth and links the Peloponnese to mainland Greece. 

Bridge across the Gulf of Corinth

We fly over the Ionian Islands of Greece: Zakinthos, which I also visited back then; Kefalonia, where my London-based friend is about to holiday; Corfu, where son Sam spent some happy days in Covid times while based in London. 

It's all blue loveliness below - and I am reminded of when I worked for the Greek Consul in Auckland many moons ago. Sitting in my little office in Newmarket, surrounded by brochures of Greece, I would dream of Hellenic escapades - thankfully, it wasn't too long before I turned those dreams into reality.

View of Corfu from above, dotted with clouds

"Tina" is finished and I have got over the feeling of wanting to get up and dance to "The Best", so I ask the guy, in nice clear English, if he is from Spain. 

"No, from Greece," he says. Aha, I realise this could be why he resembles "Adonis" and point out to him we are flying over his homeland right now. His name is Lambros (it means shining, bright and radiant - like the full moon!), he is 40yo and he lives in Barcelona. He is returning from a surf holiday in Bali. He not only speaks perfect English, he speaks six languages. 

After a life of working in hospo in clubs around the world, alongside surfing in various parts of it, his current job is transporting fresh donor semen from Spain to southern Italy for people doing IVF. Apparently donors in Italy don't get paid, so no one does it. Hence a reliance on Spanish men has emerged - there is obviously money to be made in producing and transporting these unique male goods on their lengthy journey, with deadlines. 

At this point I look down and we are flying over the Naples area - the main destination for Lambros and his cargo of donor semen. We seem to be tracking his life! And there is a weird parallel here - when I lived in London in the 1980s, I worked for the Europe Region of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, where talk of semen and IVF and similar was a daily occurrence!

We chat about travel and life for the rest of the flight over a couple of red wines (this not only added a pleasant layer but also meant we didn't have to wear the dreaded masks!). He tells me how much he adores and has missed Barcelona. I'm pretty certain that, on my homeward flight, I will not be telling any fellow flyers how much I adore Auckland and yearn to return. Because, in all honesty, I don't, and I won't!

I've been to Barcelona once before and am looking forward to returning. Lambros describes it as "the complete city" and I have to agree he is spot on. With a municipal population of 1.6m and the wider urban area being home to 5.5m, it has everything one could wish for in a city. It is one of the most densely populated cities in Europe, but doesn't feel that way. Meanwhile, his brother moved to Saskatchewan and doesn't like it very much, says it's cold ... yes indeed!

Our flight lands early at 12:40pm after 7 hours in the sky. I pass through Immigration and Health Control in a jiffy. Passport check, tick. Health QR code check, tick. No queues, no hassles, no masks required. My baggage arrives, I bid farewell to Lambros and I book an Uber to take me to the city.

The Uber location at Barcelona airport is slightly tricky to locate but Mohammed and I find each other and he delivers me swiftly, safely and scenically to my hotel on Las Ramblas. 

Okay, enough of planes - although I truly do love flying, my holiday on the ground is about to begin ...

OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
The Rio-Antirrio bridge across the Gulf of Corinth is more than twice the length of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Planned in the mid-1990s, construction began in July 1998 and it was completed in May 2004 in time for the Summer Olympics in Athens in 2004. It was finished ahead of schedule and within budget. 

Yet Aucklanders still wait in vain for that vital second harbour crossing ... after years of debate, excuses and general ongoing fiasco we seem to be no closer to this becoming a reality any time soon. Sigh ...