Tuesday, December 20

 

 

We woke about 8:30 having slept for about twelve hours. We all agreed that the pillows felt too big and too hard. We all agreed that our necks ached.

We went down for breakfast. Naa ate even more sausages than yesterday, I had an omelette, and Irma had fruit and toast and jam. Naa ran to fill her plate again as the restaurant closed.

Breakfast finally over, we head up to the second floor where the outdoor pool sparkles in the blue sky. Two people sit in the shade and we dive in the pool. We all get out in turns to take photographs of each other. Planes fly low overhead as we do, and finally I walk to the other end of the pool to take a photograph of the whole area.

In the early afternoon we will go for a walk and stop at Pizza Hut for lunch. We will explore Salah Al Din subway station, without actually taking a train, and then spend a couple of hours in the Reef mall opposite the hotel. About 30% of the shops in the mall have closed and we will notice that most of the rest have desperate-looking sales.

The mall contains a candidate for the smallest McDonalds in the world.

We will get to the airport and go straight through security, except for a small diversion when a computer refuses to accept that Naa has ever entered the country.

We will fly Emirates. What a big plane, we will say as we board. Not a full plane though, because we will have two seats each. Naa will watch a movie late into the night while I will skip the in-flight entertainment in favour of two seats with extra legroom.