A flight from Jabba's palace

For month's my brother Mark has been living in Manchester and for months I have been planning to go and see him.
Should I go before my holiday to Jamaica, should I go after? How much will a ticket cost? and when is it most reasonable, are just a few of the planning options that boggled my mind for a while. I got myself so boggled I couldn't think straight at all.
A decision needed to be made and a ticket needed to be bought. The boggling was brought to a halt by the need for me to see Mark again and the date of september 29th was chosen.
As with every holiday or short break I start to look forward to it more and more. So by the time it arrives I'm already freaking with excitement. This of course to great dismay of my partner in crime (or partner in disaster) aka testosteRON who has to put up with my freaking excitedness.
You didn't really think I was off to criminal Manchester all by myself did you? Really, get a grip!

I'll skip all the freaking and excitement and get straight to september the 29th.
After lounging about all day doing nothing basically I rock up at Ron's work at three thirty to pick him up. We head to Rotterdam by car and leave it parked at my work. From there we travel by overcrowded metro (hey we're going away for the weekend so we don't mind being squashed for a bit) change over to an overheated train (hey we're going away for the weekend so we don't mind being microwaved to a crisp for a bit) to arrive at the airport in stacks (note: we've stacks of time!) of time to check in for the flight.
We pass through customs clean as a whistle. Not so much a bleep of a machine to stop us.
We're on time, We're going to see Mark, We're going to have lots of lovely food all weekend. Life is good and Manchester is going to be great!
It is as we are sitting in departure lounge H, waiting for our flight to start boarding it all starts to go a bit pear shaped.
We wait and wait and then, wait some more. Finally about 30 min. after our flight should have left we're actually aloud to board. Not to worry, just a bit of a delay. One wee call to Mark and we're all set.
As we arrive at Manchester airport and Marks happy face is waiting to greet us I can't help the surge of excitement that passes through me. Life is good and we're here in Manchester and it's going to be great. Or at least that's what I think until I discover it is not happiness on Marks face but sheer relief. He went straight from work to the airport and had been waiting there for 31/2 hours for us.. Whoops..seems one wee call just isn't always enough.
But hey, we're there, he's there, we're all ready for a great weekend, so of we go.
We get a buss that takes us to Marks place. (note: this buss takes 20 min.)

We dump our bags at Marks place and head for the local pub, called the bumble bee or bee hive or something bee like.
Luck was finally on our side and it was Karaoke night! Not like here in Holland were only the people who can actually sing get up and have a go, here everybody gets up and has a go. From young to old, from sober to drunk (or well..probably not completely sober) :)
After a few pints and a lot of laughs we head back home for a good nights sleep..
Pints = lots of trips to the loo at night = running into jabba!
Who's Jabba you might wonder? Well that would be Jill marks housemate, who has a remarkable resemblance to Jabba the hutt... very scary!



Thankfully I didn't have any pints, so no Jabba run ins for me, but poor Ronnie on the otherhand had to pass a snoring, moaning, wailing Jabba to get to the loo.. :)
See, my life just ain't that bad, I thought! :(

Saturdaymorning arrives, we all head off to Manchester city centre for a greasy spoon! Lovely Jubly.
After the greasy spoon Mark takes us on his special Manchester tour.
Which started by calling me names:



The tour continues:
We went to a museum, saw the original of marks hideous painting he used to have up on the wall in hellevoet.
Headed toward the library to hand in a book and smack some tables!



Smack some tables? Yep, in the centre of the library there is a beautiful room, just absolutely magnificent. And when you push a chair back, it echoes through the whole place. Of course I found pushing a chair back a bit of a limitation of my skills, so I went for the smacking of the table instead. This to great annoyance of almost everybody there ( I think this had to do with the, quiet please, study area sign that was up).
As you leave the library you get a great shot of a shakespeare window..ooooooh......



Traipsing back toward the buss station, where we're going to catch a buss to the trafford centre we pass some weird science.



You actually stick your head in the pod and they explain about a new way of producing energy, spiffy or what?!
Before we get on the buss another wee cup of tea is needed and we stop at starbucks for a bit of lounging and enjoying the view.



After starbucks we head out to the trafford centre.
http://www.traffordcentre.co.uk/
Where we start of in the food court, of course.
Well, what else do you expect when your out with two van der Borns.
The foodcourt is shaped like a big cruiseship and has about ten different take-away places to choose from.
Marks goes for the KFC, and Ronnie and I (luckily) go for noodles at the orient Xpression.
Now that the feeding frenzy is over, the serious shopping can start. This means I head for anything with sale in the window and Mark and Ronnie head toward the games workshop.



Manchester is great, life is good.
until we get to the comedyclub and the tickets are all sold out!!
Hey, life could be worse, so we head of to have some dinner and meet up with our Manchester friends (what are Manchester folk called? manchesterians? ) we met in Jamaica.

Before our friends turn up, mark turns Green or maybe it was more a shade of turquoise? Yes, you have guessed correctly, food poisoning. So off home to Jabba's palace he goes.
Our friends turn up, we have a few drinks.
Head over to a pub, have a few more drinks.



Have just a few more..



and then the bomb bursts. Bryn and Wendy (our manchesterian, manchurian or just Manchester folk friends) tell us, they've just split up.
How sad is that?! They didn't want to tell us by email and wanted to come for drink with us anyway, how lovely are they!!
So even more drinks had to follow the bursting of the bomb.

This of course resulted in a major hangover situation on sunday, causing me to meet Jabba and her loo and trust me, both were not a pleasure! :)
After hours of getting better acquainted with the loo on sundaymorning we finally made it in to Manchester where I had to miss out on my second greasy spoon but at least got to stock up on lots of choccies etc.
With no time to spare (trust me on the no time to spare part here), we go to the buss station, where we miss the Manchester airport buss by 3 minutes (yes, exactly three minutes). 20 minutes later we take a different service to the airport (yes a different service, no we didn't think to ask how long this service would take!, do we sound like well prepared people here?, my god get off my back I was hungover okay!!).
This service takes 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to Manchester airport, where we run towards our check-in desk.
At the check-in desk this stupid, mingy cow (don't forget I'm still hungover here) tells us, we're to late and can't get on this flight anymore. I start to argue, but is the stupid mingy cow taking any notice? NO, and I mean NO!
I thought I scored extra points with crossing the whole of the terminal in 10 minutes flat with a hangover. I don't think the stupid mingy cow really appreciated that, but oh well. :)



TestostoRON sorted out where to go for new tickets while I had a real girlie cry about it all.
We schlep ourselves all the way across the terminal again to get to the KLM desk, where we're finally able to book new tickets.
All that's left to do, is pass through customs and get ourselves to the right gate on time. Getting to the right gate on time, turns out to be less of a problem than getting a hungover Tracy through customs. This time the debacle is not about christmas crackers, but about my new lipbalm, that is still totally sealed.
The stupid nasty customs pillock wants to search my bag, I don't really want him to do that, but hey, do I really have anything to say on the matter? NO, and I mean NO!
So, at the end of it, my deodorant gets binned and so does my lipbalm(vaseline based..could be explosive). I actually feel like snatching it from him and telling him he can't have it, unless he pries it out of my cold dead fingers, but one look at Ronnie's face is enough to make me nod and say; well if that's the way it has to be..

After that, it all went pretty straight forward. If you don't count the turbulence on the flight, the thunderstorm at schiphol which meant we weren't aloud to leave the plane until it had passed over, the 25 min. wait for the train and catching the last metro in rotterdam by the skin of our teeth.. :)

But by Darn, it was an adventure.

(There was one other woman that missed the flight with us, she seemed very upset. She had been in the airport for hours, but was waiting in the wrong lounge and then couldn't find the right check-in desk, now that's sad for a start. But it gets worse. She turned up at the klm desk to get another ticket, just like us, but when we got on the flight she was nowhere to be seen.
Do you suppose she could still be waiting in a lounge somewhere at Manchester terminal 1? )