TRIP REPORT – Another birthday trip to Dubai…this time during COVID

For most of the Summer months it actually looked like I may be in luck, Europe was opening up (something I experienced first hand in Italy), travel corridors between the UK and other countries were proliferating at an encouraging rate and the Seychelles itself was gradually adding more and more countries to its list of safe countries.

I was checking the Seychelles health department website on an almost daily basis and seeing lots of countries with worse infection rates than the UK being added. Surely, I thought, it was just a matter of time…

Then, in late August, cases started spiking throughout Europe (including the UK), travel corridors were being shut – seemingly at a moment’s notice and clearly my trip to the Seychelles would have to be postponed yet again. The coup de grace came in the form of an all too familiar cancellation email from BA, in early September.

Brilliant.

I now had a week booked off work and nowhere to go. I could have returned to Italy but that would be boring, I was also a bit concerned of the impact to my waistline of yet another round of daily 4 course dinners and pasta lunches.

Luckily I didn’t really have to do too much thinking of my own since it transpired that a number of my friends happened to be gathering on my birthday weekend in Dubai. Flights were cheap, award availability was plentiful and Dubai’s luxury hotels appeared to be experimenting in delivering a price as close to free as humanly possible…