Friday, January 31

Yesterday we ate at a local restaurant called Damascus. We ate and ate. Fresh salads, pickles, and many different breads passed across the table, before the meal had even begun.

We added eating at Damascus to our list of things to do again.

This morning we finished packing and went to the pool. We had a room on the mezzanine floor for the first time – M07, fact fans – so we could walk there in seconds using the stairs.

The pool looked like this when we arrived, and very much not like this fifteen minutes later. Clouds arrived, the temperature dropped sharply, and we found ourselves windbathing, until we gave up and went shopping.

We will leave Dubai in confusion. Finnair will keep sending us contradictory messages, or at least the messages and the information on the Finnair app will contradict each other. We will sit in the lounge debating who to believe.

Eventually we will board a middle-sized plane fifty minutes late and the pilot will tell us that the six hour flight will take ”unusually long because of tail winds”.

He will mention nine hours as an estimate. Some tailwinds, we will think.