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A few days ago the opportunity came about to go to Saudi Arabia. The country recently opened its borders to tourists and I honestly have no idea what to expect, but I’m quite excited. On top of that, two seats opened up in Emirates First to fly from San Francisco to Dubai, en route to Riyadh, on the A380. Bucket list check.
I’ve been writing this blog for over 4 years now, and Emirates first has been a huge aspirational trip for me. I’ve had many opportunities to fly it, but I’d always chosen another option because of the massive points needed or heavy added surcharges. I was planning on flying the 77W from EWR to ATH this year, but alas, plans kept changing, and it looked as if another year would go by without an Emirates booking.
Then Saudi Arabia popped up.
It was super last minute and lo and behold…2 seats in first were available out of SFO to DXB on the A380 ( OMG!!! ) with a couple days stopover, and then a continuation on to Riyadh on the 77W. Currently, that’s on the older first class, but fingers are crossed that they open up the DXB to RUH space on their new flagship First. Needless to say…I’ll be happy to start using my own images instead of this one provided by Emirates 🙂
We booked it all with an enormous grip of Alaska miles. 150k each and $77 in taxes and fees. It’s an enormous outlay of points, but we had them, and you only live once, right?
If you wish to follow along on Emirates First, Dubai, and check out Saudi Arabia – I’ll be posting on my personal and Miles instagrams. Not exactly sure how much I’ll be able to photograph/film while in Saudi so stay tuned!
https://www.instagram.com/zacharyburrabel/?hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/monkey_miles/?hl=en
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
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