Howdiee y'all

This is DFW US (which, for those who mistakenly believe that's a polite abbreviation of Don't F*** With Us, let me tell you; you're wrong - it means Dallas Fort Worth, in the United States of America.)

Glad we got that cleared up.

Yes, we arrived. But before we come to the delights of the Holiday Inn Express in DFW (the acronym describes the hotel this time; Dilapidated on the Free Way (all right, I borrowed a bit of licence there. Give me a break, as they say around here. It's late)), before all that, let's go back to leaving home yesterday.

After a lot of debate and attempts to find cheaper options, in the end we decided it was just simpler with so many bags to drive to Hamster Nan. A bit of a slow journey; an accident had pretty much closed the A2 north and southbound, so all the backroads were blocked too. Though I have to say, it allowed us to have a gentle start to our driving experience for this holiday. Also allowed us to have a good chat in the car, which is one of the reasons we do this Road Warrior stuff at all - we have some of our best talks and laughs when we're on the road! For example; yesterday, whilst chatting, Sarah was reminiscing about a recent time away together to northern Italy. We stayed in a beautiful little town where we met several of the local reprobates, who insisted on giving us a tour of the local bars (it was the new Prosecco season apparently, and we just had to try some). They also insisted on letting the dog, Zep, off his lead to run around the squares and streets with all the other dogs. "Canis libris" (or something like), they shouted, slapping me on the shoulder as they removed the dog's lead, "In Italia, canis libris!".

Fair enough. So Sarah was reminding me of this and we were laughing - it was a great trip, and we did get to sample several bottles of excellent Prosecco with our hosts. "It's amazing," said Sarah yesterday, "just how good your Spanish can get when you have had a bottle of Prosecco or two."

"How absolutely true," I spluttered, heaving with laughter, "you spoke Spanish like a native!"

Eventually, as you inevitably do in The Netherlands, we arrived in Hamster Nan, and dropped the car at the long term parking. We did a kind of ' Stone of Destiny'  thing to pick where to park - the place was huge, and decided on the 'emergency row':

Emergency Row only

Then a free shuttle bus to the airport proper, and we found the hotel, Citizen M, with a little bit of advice from our driver, Boris* (not necessarily his real name). We were the only passengers on the bus, and Sarah insisted on trying to pay the guy....

So - Hotel Citizen M; anyone going to Hamster Nan airport, what can I tell you? Perfect hotel airport; rooms are small, but perfectly formed, and we had a view from our bed across the active airport (calm down Uli). Don't get me wrong either - we couldn't hear any aircraft noise, but  we did enjoy this view,

Room with a view

Headed into the airport after dropping everything off, to get some food. We passed at this restaurant, because we thought the joke wasn't very funny;

Unlikely

and settled for an excellent pizza house instead. Then back to hotel, bed, alarm, up, aeroplane etc... and in the next exciting instalment I'll tell you how Sarah got locked out of the aeroplane.... and I got run over ttrying to stop the plane....

Let the right one in