It is huge. Fancy, but too big. I’m not really a fan. Now, I could be jaded because I only got 4 hours of sleep before leaving Mauritania a billion hours ago, but I think even rested this place would not be my cup of tea. It took 10 minutes for the bus to drive us to the terminal, where it was entirely unclear where I was supposed to go to check in and pick up the boarding pass I needed. The only flights on the monitors were Emirates Airlines flights, and since I was transferring to RwandAir, I was SOL. I asked a friendly airport worker for help, and he told me to go upstairs to Terminal 1. Problem: there were zero signs showing terminal numbers of any kind. The only signs pointed to gate numbers. This is not helpful when you don’t have a boarding pass or a screen to tell you what gate your flight is leaving from. So my solution was to wander around the airport and hope I eventually stumbled on the right place. Maybe not the greatest idea, since, as I mentioned, it’s a HUGE airport, but it was the only one I had at the time.
Fortunately, in my research on the snoozecube (more on my experience with that later), I discovered that it was by a gate number in the same terminal that a previous email had indicated my flight would be in. Finally, about 30 minutes later, I found an info desk near the snoozecube, where they directed me to the transfer desk for RwandAir. It’s about 2am at this point; we landed at 1am. So, I found the transfer desk, but they weren’t going to open until 3am. Ugh. My grand plan had been to get my boarding pass immediately, then have a solid 3 hours of snoozing in the cube before my 6:15 flight. Instead, I snoozed for 45 minutes, then went to get my boarding pass. This is where the Dubai airport redeemed itself in the form of 2 of the nicest airport workers I’ve ever encountered. They were happy to help, printed my boarding pass, and when they realized my bags had been checked in Nouakchott, they looked up my bags, made sure they had made it to Dubai, and put a note in the system to ensure they accompanied me to Kigali. All of this was done cheerfully. This is now 3:30am, they have the night shift, which has to suck, and they’re being super friendly to a bleary-eyed American who has no idea what she’s doing (there was never a sign for RwandaAir, even at the check-in desk. I just had to keep asking people until I found the right place).
Anyway, after that, it was back to the snoozecube for another nap, then down the terminal for the last leg of the trip!
Toto...We're Not In NYC Anymore 