20250406 Brisbane, Dubai to Madrid

20250406 What an amazing experience, we are so proud of our little man Hamish after being excepted to be part of a high level U12 squad to travel to Spain to participate in the MICFootball Tournament. (Costa Brava, Barcelona). MICFootball is one of the most prestigious youth football tournaments in the world that’s been running for over 20 years. Many of the highest quality and well known clubs from around the world participate in this tournament every year. Teams such as FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Liverpool FC and Bayern Munich just to name a few and now that day has finally arrived and we are all very excited.

Des prepared us a late lunch, his famous prawn cutlets that we pigged out on before heading to the airport, we had a clear run all the way and arrived in ample time so after our goodbyes we watched as Des drove off until he returns in three weeks to pick us up.

Des drops us off and with our suit case in tow we head inside to check in our luggage, let the fun begin.

Fare well Brisbane as we head to the departure lounge for our last cold Aussie Beer for the next few weeks.

More of the team arrive so we take a quick photo of Brett and Fox before entering the departure lounge.

Hamish, Max and Fox, more of the team chosen for the MICFootball Tournament, what luck boys.

Sharyn and I enjoy a nice refreshing Vodka,(well I had the vodka)while waiting to board our long flight to Dubai.

The boys fill up on some junk food before boarding the plane, I think the sugar fix has hit Fox.

Our Airbus Industrie A380 is loading, not long now.

Mum and son, two peas in a pod and cheeky as ever.

Hamish checking out the huge propeller as we begin boarding.

It’s 8:29pm as we settle in for a 14 hour flight, Mum and son, Hamish certainly has that family’s characteristic.

It’s now 1:04 in the morning and it’s difficult to sleep, we still have 10h 11m to our destination and so far it’s been smooth sailing.

Well at least some of us are getting some sleep, maybe I should have taken a pill to knock myself out.😏

We are getting close now, just over an 1/2 hour to landing in Dubai.

Yaa! Dubai airport, we’ve finally landed, now to stretch our legs and hopefully find a cafe for a nice hot coffee.

We made it to Dubai, now for the final part of our journey.

20250407 With our feet on the ground we all collect our carry on luggage and depart the plane, now to find our departure gate and it just had to be at the very end of the airport. After a long walk we found a cafe and grabbed a coffee, some snacks and a loo along the way, but we weren’t expecting to pay $28 for 2 cups of coffee, thats definitely a bit extreme.

Dubai International Airport is currently the world's busiest international airport by passenger traffic but it’s not the largest in terms of physical size, although it’s planned to be the largest airport in the world by both size and capacity once construction is completed, hence their expensive coffee, it must be to help pay for the new construction. But like many airports around the world, the pandemic left many of its gates standing empty. The slowdown led to a 70% drop in passengers at DXB to 26 million in 2020 – making it still the world’s busiest airport. King Fahd, near the city of Dammam, about 200 miles east of the Saudi capital Riyadh, is the world's largest airport, it’s a remarkable 300 square miles, Wow!.

Dubai International Airport, now that’s what I call an awesome airport, money, money, money and expensive coffee.

The interior of the Dubai International Airport, it’s certainly spiffy.

We depart Dubai at 7:45am Dubai time, 7h 45min to our next destination, Madrid Barajas Airport, then we  will need to deal with jet lag, let’s go to Spain they said, it will be fun they said, but it will be worth it. We watched some movies to break the boredom then played some trivial games while challenging each other which broke the boredom.

Just one of the many questions I got wrong 😡 but at least it kept us entertained for the flight.

Finally we arrived at the Madrid International Airport with these cheeky pair, Hamish and Fox, team mates.

Madrid Airport’s official name is Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas, which is awkwardly long. So people refer to it as “Barajas” to make it shorter. The IATA airport code for Madrid is MAD.

Now to find where to collect our luggage from, one guy asked me if I knew where to go, just follow everyone else as we all piled into a train, it was like the blind leading the blind but we found pickup carriage 6 where our luggage was being loaded. After collecting our luggage we then head to the departure gate to meet our pickup only he wasn’t there, just what we need after a long flight. Sharyn made a few calls then we decided to catch a cab to our Hotel for a much needed rest.

 

Hamish, Fox and Max, the 2025 SDB Academy team mates, such a proud and exciting moment for them.

Let the Games Begin