We were all up very early for the morning drive to Toulouse Matabiau rail station with Nico and Miyu to catch the 6.15am train to Barcelona. We almost had a small disaster at the Toulouse station; I had driven to Toulouse and Nico was to drive back to Moissac, before he and Miyu would then swap to their VW to drive back to Redon in Brittany. After we reached the station (with 10 minutes to spare) we said our goodbyes, then Rita and I headed into the station building to find our train. Nico went back to the car, but couldn't work out why it was not starting, until he realised that I had left with the remote key in my pocket (where I usually keep it when I am driving the Renault). Luckily, he realised this in time and ran into the building behind us, just as we were about to descend the steps to go to our platform. Another 30 seconds and we would have disappeared into the bowels of the station, then headed off to Barcelona with the key!!  I don't even want to think what would have happened if that had occurred )-:

The train trip to Barcelona was trouble free, including the change of trains in Narbonne. When we arrived in Barcelona, we took a taxi from the station to the airport (30euro), thus avoiding lots of dragging heavy suitcases around (especially the steel pan case which is very awkward to carry).

We arrived at the airport in plenty of time for our 4.25pm flight to Dubai, which was late leaving by about 30 minutes.

We arrived in Dubai after midnight, then took a shuttle bus to the Emirates Copthorne Hotel for a complementary overnight sleep because of the long transit time between flights (more than 8 hours). This is a very nice feature of the Emirates flight service, and the room was very nice (even if it was overly air-conditioned to counteract the very warm conditions outside, even at 1am in the morning!).