As promised in Part 1 of this two-part blog series, I will share here in Part 2, where in Dubai we stayed after our MSC World Europa cruise, what we did in Dubai on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the pricing for our round-trip Emirates flights between JFK and DXB, as well as pricing of other elements of this first UAE trip for our family of 5.   

Day 4 of the pre-inaugural MSC World Europa sailing was also Christmas Eve, and on that day, our family of 5 disembarked in Dubai where we would spend another two days before flying back to New York. Prior to leaving the United States, we booked our transportation from the cruise port to our post-cruise hotel, but with stops at the Dubai Miracle Garden and the gold souk in between, since we would disembark the ship early in the morning, and hotel check-in times are usually in the afternoon. In full transparency, the night before getting off the ship, I received communication from the ground transportation company through WhatsApp messages confirming our cruise port pickup. However, at some point during the WhatsApp communication, when the company “realized” that we are a family of 5 with luggage, the company stated that the transportation that I already booked from the cruise port would be too small to accommodate all of us and our luggage. Even after I explained that 2 of the 5 of us were small children, the company insisted that I would need to book a separate van transport from the cruise port to the hotel, and then, the initial car that was reserved for us could pick us up from the hotel to take us to the Dubai Miracle Garden and the gold souk. There was a lot of back and forth with this on the night before disembarkation, which honestly annoyed me

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