This latest trip report covers my recent flight back to the UK for a family celebration followed by a quick jaunt around Europe on the way back to the Middle East.

The lead up to this trip had seen a period of crazy travel (by my lowly standards at least) where I had been backwards and forwards between the Middle East, UK, and Malaysia on numerous occasions, all unfortunately in economy class due to my having to fit the travel within a pre-determined project development budget. This succession of 8 hour flights had almost left me yearning for the good old days of 2009 when my commute was the more rapid Dubai to Riyadh run - although I’m sure I’ll have the dubious pleasure of revisiting that route and the fair city of Riyadh in the not to distant future. Combined with this cumulative travel fatigue, Iceland unfortunately exploded in the lead up to this trip, sending my future wife into somewhat of a tailspin, so the lead up to the trip was more stressful than most. Fortunately, this all resolved itself by time of travel, although I had been secretly quite looking forward to my reserve route via Morocco, Spain, and France, the design and execution of which appealed to the romantic traveller and timetable geek in me in almost equal measure.

With this potential obstacle removed the trip returned to its previous more mundane shape but still contains plenty of personal highlights to look forward to. Trip overview is as follows:

Leg 1: DXB-LGW Emirates 777-300 (Business Class)
Leg 2: LGW-BCN EasyJet A319-100 (Lacking in Class)
Leg 3: BCN-CDG Air France A321-200 (Economy Class)
Leg 4: CDG-DXB Emirates A380-800 (Business Class)

I shall try and fit in a brief overview of any hotels, etc. Apologies in advance for any sections which lack detail, I wasn’t really planning on writing about this until about 5 minutes ago so will have to rely on memory.