Saturday

Saturday morning we let Ethan sleep and Isaac watch TV while I packed and Taylor took the rental car back. It was nice to not be in a rush. We got the the airport and immediately fell in love with Emirates Airline. Short lines, lots of helpful workers. Our bags were too heavy and the agents reply "no big deal". Yeah! They even gave an entire bulkhead to our family. This allowed us to have a bassinet for Miles to sleep in and lots of leg room for the rest of us.
Gatwick airport was more like a train station than an airport. We had to sit in a huge waiting area until 1 hour before our plane left and only then was our flight assigned a gate and we could go there. By the time we got there (we're slow with so many carry-ons and dragging children) there was no where to sit. Happily they allowed pre-boarding for families just 2 minutes later. The family behind us that tried to preboard made me really laugh. There's just a mom and dad and one kid and the stewardess says "Sir, this is pre-boarding for families with small children six years old and younger. How old is your son?" Six, the man replys. Instantly his son starts pulling on his shirt and saying loudly "Dad, I'm 8. Dad, I'm not 6 I'm 8!" The gate agent did not let them board.
Also when we went through security, they made me "sample" the liquids we brought that were over 3 ounces. Tragically that meant I got to drink a sip of Miles' bottle as well as taste his apple baby food. Baby food- not so bad. Formula Milk- nasty and slightly sweet. Taylor got a good laugh out of it until they pulled him aside to open up our carry-on bags. Let's just say there were lots of electronics to entertain the kids- portable DVD player, back up battery for the DVD player, Ipod with music, Ipod with videos, Leapster, Iphone, etc. Apparently there were enough electronic parts and wires that the X-ray person thought it was a wired bomb. Taylor stopped laughing pretty quick.
The Emirates plane was amazing and actually a good lead up to what Dubai would be like- a little strange and WAY over the top. Individual fold-out TVs with at least 100 movies, large flat-screen TVs with amazing graphics showing our flight pattern, status, times, etc. There were an amazing number of stewards and all very friendly. They brought puppet "souvenirs" for all 3 kids and then came back and took polaroids of the kids and then attached the picture to a card and signed their names. I felt like we were at Disneyland. The food was excellent and they brought us 3 different meals and it was just a 6 hour flight. The bathrooms had changing tables and outside them on the walls there were little water fountains with cups and trash cans so you could get water for yourself instead of always having to walk back to the back of the plane to beg a stewardess for water. They gave us crayons and coloring sheets. They even gave out real headphones and even had child sized ones for the boys.
Miles spent most of the time just chilling in the bassinet which they brought right after take-off and let us keep until just before landing. Delta refuses to bring them until after dinner and drinks and a second round of coffee and tea.

We loved Emirates Airline until we got to Dubai. Apparently there was no open gate for us to land at so after a full hour of circling in the air (yuck) they had us go to Terminal 1. Emirates air has it's own terminal we later found out which is terminal 3 and so usually you just get off, and go a few hundred feet to an escalator and then downstairs to baggage claim. Because of this they don't bother to give you your stroller at the gate and instead make you pick them up at baggage claim. This was bad for us since Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 are like 5 football fields apart. So we deplaned carrying Miles, a backpack, a monster diaper bag, a rolly bag, 2 kids rolly bags with toys and 2 kids backpacks with food, and our coats and jackets which we no longer needed since it was rainy and 50's in London and muggy and 95 in Dubai. The airport just kept going and going and Ethan kept saying "I just want to sit down and sleep". This was 1am Dubai time and about 10pm London time, plus Ethan was still dehydrating from being sick on Friday. After 30 minutes of walking and dragging we finally flagged down a golf cart person who kindly drove us to Customs. Customs only took 5 minutes and then we got our things at baggage claim and went to go rent our car.
Taylor was stoked to get a Ford Flex since he kind of wants one instead of a mini-van. By this time it was 2:30am and we put in the address for the Marriott hotel into the GPS. Nothing. We tried Taylor's Iphone. Nothing. He went in and the rental car people tried to help him find it. Nothing. They tried calling the hotel. Even they couldn't explain where it was. Turns out everything in Dubai is so new that NOTHING shows up on the GPS yet. Also, they seem to like to use the same names over and over again. Mostly because there are almost no paved roads beside the main interstates. Seriously, you turn off the interstate onto one road, go 10 yards and turn onto a dirt road and then turn on another dirt road to get to the Marriott. And it's in Downtown Dubai!!! We finally got into our hotel room at 3:30am and tried to go to bed. The porter wanted to show us all the balconies and insisted on laying out slippers and robes and showing up everything before he'd go. The kids crashed and so did we.
Not a bad deal though. Taylor got us a 2 bedroom suite so that we'd have a little extra space to spread out and hopefully sleep better. It cost what you'd pay for 1 nice room in the states and turned out to be an entire apartment larger than our apartment in DC- and brand spanking new of course. There was even a 3rd bedroom for Miles as well as a full kitchen (dishwasher, china, everything), dining room, living room, 2 balconies, a washer/dryer, 4 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms and an entryway the size of a garage. Crazy! but nice.