Emirates!

Earlier I wrote about The Thistle hotel and that it wasn't worth staying in. However, the view across the runway to T5 was amazing. This was taken at about 2 am. Even though planes were landing a couple of 100 metres away it wasn't noisy, which was good.

Emirates is a great airline. One of the best that I have flown with actually. The seats have lots of leg room, the food is good and the staff are friendly and approachable. I was talking to a Russian flight attendant for about an hour. He told me that with Emirates he got an apartment in Dubai to use on his visits there, got to choose his own routes if he wanted to go somewhere in particular and that the pay was really good. However, being constantly jet-lagged was a killer. This is something I can relate to since I am now writing this at 4am and I'm fully awake after having passed out at 8pm and slept for 7 hours. =(

As I was talking to the this Russian, we flew over Baghdad and the Tigris River. I managed to take a few pictures. It was my first time flying over the Middle East.





One thing that I noticed was that it is very, very flat! No hills or anything until the dessert and the mountains meet, something that I didn't manage to get in the picture. Need a better camera I think.



















We were very lucky on the EK008 flight from London to Dubai. Duncan and I had chosen our seats before boarding, where he had a window seat and I had an isle seat. However, we looked around and realised that the plane wouldn't be completely full so we decided to move from our seats. In the end we managed to get a whole middle row of 4 seats to ourselves. EACH! Sleep lying down. Wooo hoo =P Much more comfortable than sitting and sleeping.
One more thing about Emirates is the amount of movies that you can watch. They had many new releases and old ones. All in all there were over 80 films and comedy shows and cartoons. The TV screens were massive (though not as big as the 15-17 inch monitors in business class) and by using the phone you could make a call to any other seat on the plane. Very convenient if you and your friends don't end up next to each other. Power sockets are available for charging your laptop.

Thistle Hotel London Heathrow 1.5/5 *

This is not a hotel that I would recommend if you are travelling into Heathrow and staying overnight and catching a connecting flight the next day. I booked a room at the Thistle because it was the cheapest option at that time, but still cost me £60 for one night. Holiday Inn had a room for £50 but when I went to book it, it was no longer available.

The service at Thistle hotel is terrible. Slow staff who are not service orientated, not enough staff to take care of all the people checking in and the fact that check in time is at 14.30 . This is not good for travellers flying into Heathrow early as I did, around 0800. All I could do was leave my bags in their luggage room and walk around London.

Furthermore, for this price you would expect free Internet and odour free rooms. They charged £5 for 1.5 hours of wireless Internet access and the room smelled of some strange cleaning product. Also, the hotel shuttle was not free, and cost £8 return from arrivals.

However, the only + that I can think off is the free bus from outside the hotel to T5 where the underground runs from Heathrow into London.

For all travellers I'd recommend you to pick another hotel, either the Sheraton or Holiday inn,