Flight to Cape Town

A long trip to Cape Town

We went to the lounge for Emirates and it was
a) at least 15 mins walk from the gate where the flight was leaving,
b) packed when we got there. We found the last 2 seats.
c) wasn’t all that impressive.

Wouldn’t recommend that lounge. We finally went to our gate and they were already boarding our A380_800 aircraft. Economy class boards at one level and business and first class board the upper

level. It was pretty amazing the amenities on board. Geoff and I were in separate pods on the window but I had to lean over my seat to talk to him. Since the flight was overnight and you couldn’t see outside in the dark we decided to move to 2 centre seats where we could at least talk. After lots of champagne and a great dinner they brought us mattress pads for the chairs and we could lay out flat to sleep. I slept. Geoff hung out at the stand-up bar at the back of the plane for most of the flight.

After the 7 hour flight to Dubai, we had a 3-hour layover before our flight to Cape Town. Emirates Airlines occupies most of the airport and has a separate terminal just for the Airbus 380’s. Interesting though that there was only one gateway to disembark and we had to go down the stairs from the top level to the bottom level. Okay with me as I wanted to check out how the stairs between levels worked.

The Dubai airport is gigantic and of course, our departure gate was the furthest from where we landed. I was glad I bought new airport walking shoes in Lisse.

Emirates has multiple lounges in the airport and separate lounges for first class vs business class. Our lounge was right outside our gate this time. Geoff took advantage of the showers while we were there.

We boarded our next flight on a Boeing 777 to Cape Town on time and while the seats weren’t as luxurious as the Airbus 380 they did recline so we got a chance to try to get some more sleep.

After 22 hours of door to door travel, we finally arrived in Cape Town in sunny warm weather. We were met at the gate by someone who escorted us to immigration and then he headed off to find our luggage. He handed us off to a driver from Ilios Tours who drove us to our boutique hotel, Cape Cadogan. A quick dinner at a local restaurant and then off for some much-required sleep.