Day 1: Thursday, Nov. 18

Arrived in Dubai at 8 AM local time.  The 12 hour flight from JFK to Dubai was a piece of cake, due mainly to the all around awesomeness of the Emirates Air flight experience.  Each passenger gets their own seat back media screen, allowing you to watch TV, films, play games, check your flight status,  and even look at live shots from cameras mounted on the plane's nose, tail, and below.

Because of our 10 hour layover, the airline put us up in a room for the day.  Again, Emirates is the best!
So... first visit to a Muslim country, only a short time to explore... what to do?  Visit Biggles English Pub, of course, which was located in our hotel lobby.  I later came to learn that alcohol can only be served in certain hotels.  So all of the restaurants are dry, unless they're in a hotel.

Time for a shower, short nap, and then we had just a short time before getting everything together to go back to the airport.

We boarded our flight at midnight for the 3 hour flight to Cochin, India.  This day was a little bit of a blur.   :-)

The Cochin airport was PACKED at 3 AM.  There was also a lot of traffic on the road.  Daytime was even more crowded.