Day 1 – 2009 07 12 - Prior to landing in the 'Dam…

Got up nice and early, to make sure that everything was fine and the bedding was laundered for Matt, our great housesitter. Hung out with the cats for a little while, not quite sure if they know that there was something going on.

Breakfast was cheese and onion waffles. (Kinda a last taste of America but with added onion). Rebecca was wonderful in her offer to drive us to the Airport (which went without a hitch, other than not being able to locate the KLM departures (hidden below layers of NWA and Delta.)

We’d checked in online, but for some reason my passport couldn’t be scanned so we were

required to go to the ridiculous line for special services. A 90 minute line!!!! (we also managed to officially jump the queue a little, as it became clear that if the Amsterdam people didn’t then we would be missing our flights).

After the lovely line I still only got my boarding pass for Amsterdam and need to get another to Barcelona when we land. (Sunny managed to get both from the nice auto kiosk). I guess that when they tell you to arrive 2 hours early there are times when they actually mean it, (we also managed to officially jump the queue a little, as it became clear that if the Amsterdam people didn’t then we would be missing our flights)

We are heading on holiday, so we are Mr. and Mrs. Positive. Security as fine, and the double Jack and Coke on the other side was even finer (even though the plane had already started boarding by the time we had gotten through security)

On board and in flight (as we a

re now) and all is good… We are a couple of glasses of wine down, ate a really rather nice “Asian Vegetarian” meal, a super thing but satisfying brownie, followed by our after/during dinner entertainment “Monsters versus Aliens”.

Our clocks are set to Amsterdam/Barcelona time, which means that it’s midnight 22 tomorrow, and maybe we should think about trying to get a little sleep.

I did get a little bit of a thrill as the captain was letting us know the route and he told us that at around 6-7am UK time we would be travelling over my home island… So hopefully anyone in the UK who knows me will be up and checking out the sky. Notice a nice red and sliver plane. That will be the plane which we’re on.

England was cloudy as we passed over, there was a point where I could see land, but the land was dark and the sun was light, so my camera decided that it would prefer not to take pics...

Wil