The trip to Europe ....

I just had a trip to Europe for a month from the 17th of April 2012. The purpose of the trip was to accompany my family who had never been to Europe and also for me to visit Italy which I had missed before during my student days. 

Then, I used to go and even worked in northern Europe such as in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark during the summer vacations whereby students were required to gain working experience and write a report on it. Somehow, I had no time to go to Italy or the Iberian peninsula. As for Britain, the farthest north had been 0xford. I had missed the Lake District, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man and several others. 

Armed with a few thousand pounds and some euros that I could garner from what was left from the last group tour some 4 years ago, my family set off to London on the Emirates 380-800. Some 7 hours later, the wide bodied Airbus touched down on the Dubai airport tarmac. As there was no aerobridge to connect the plane to the finger terminal, we had to enter the airport building by way of a bus. And what a confusion it was at the transfer points. Passengers from different planes seem to converge into the same area to be tranferred to another plane. To make matters worse, there were no Emirates personnel to guide the passengers. Somehow by following the general flow of the crowd, we managed to reach the duty-free area. 

All the latest Rolex watches were displayed for the tourists and in another shop, I saw, for the first time, one kilo of 999.9% pure gold bar. Confused as to what to see, we all decided to go to the toilets. It was one of the most crowded duty- free concourse I have ever seen. The place seemed to reek of money.