the flip side

If you travel much on business then you probably also suffer with the over-plastic syndrome. That is, one loyalty card for each airline you may ever have flown with, one for each hotel you may ever have stayed in and perhaps even one for each car hire company you have ever hired from. If you are very careful and extremely organised you may manage to always stay at the same hotel chain when you go somewhere, or even use the same airline, but for most of us we end up collecting dribs and drabs of points here and there. And then you move countries and lo-and-behold all the miles you collected on your previous national carrier become null and void as they expire into uselessness before you know it.

We suffer from this syndrome in our house too. The only program we really get value from, for the most part, is Skywards (with Emirates). We now also accrue points, uh miles, when using our credit card, which makes it a whole lot easier (and more likely) that we get to upgrade when flying. The less useful loyalty programs, in my opinion, are the hotel ones. Normally you get to stay at a particular chain once, or twice if you are lucky, and then you fly to another city and they either a) don’t have that chain at all b) have it but with no availability or c) the branch is stuck way-away in an area you don’t need. So you stay somewhere else and start all over again. In the end you have a whole whack of stuff weighing your wallet down, and a whole bunch of spammy travel-type special offer emails clogging up your inbox every week, but nothing more.

So I was pleasantly surprised when Stu told me that he had managed to qualify for a free night at one of the Radisson hotels. We did nothing about making a booking for the longest time until they sent him an email to say that the free night would expire at the end of the year. He scrambled around and tried to book us into their Fujairah or Ras Al Khaimah hotels on one of the two nights we actually had available to us to still use this year (not counting visiting friends, Christmas and working days of course). But alas we tarried too long and there was no room uh, at the sea-side. So we ended up with a booking at their hotel near the Dubai Creek.

Now I love this part of Dubai – called Deira. Originally settled in 1841 it’s where you will find the Gold Souq (market), the Spice Souq and a host of other interesting, albeit touristy, spots. It’s still old-fashioned and low-key (compared to other parts of the city). On any given day you will find several wooden dhows lining the creekside, and can watch as fridges, barrels of cooking oil, car tyres, sacks of rice and even the odd motor vehicle are loaded onto them for onward shipment to Iran or Pakistan. It’s another world.

We had a lovely room on the 9th floor with a view of both the creek, and the hotel swimming pool. I sat and watched the sun go down over the water, whilst the hustle and bustle carried on in the street below, even though it was a friday. I felt like I was in a different city entirely. Stu and I later enjoyed a lovely steak at the Palm Grill, followed by a night cap at “Up on the 10th” (their jazz bar). Certainly worth a return visit.

It may have only have been a one night mini-break but I feel like I have had a vacation. Wonderful!