I thought I might as well begin near the start at the hotel that me and Greeno stayed in the night before the flight. Takeoff was at 06:10 and I figured that to try and stop a migraine I should try and get as much sleep as possible before we got there, and a single room costs pretty much the same amount as a twin so Greeny might as well come along.

We stayed at the Bewleys Hotel which is located about 5 minutes walk from the Terminal 1 building, which was great, excpet we were flying from Terminal 2 (all KLM flights are T2, I think) but with the help of the Sky Bridge we were able to walk to Terminal 2 in about 10-15 minutes.

The hotel was very nice, nicer than the Crowne Plaza next door, where I had stayed a couple of years ago. It was a modern leather sofa type of a place, with granite-esque floors (or maybe they were real, I can’t remember). All very bright and clean, with friendly and helpful staff.

The room (£69 a night with additional costs for off-site parking) was pretty big, so much so that it had 2 double beds in it, which was nice. The bathroom was granite/avonite and chrome, with a powerful shower (in the bath). I was quite surprised that we could only use 1 bathroom socket at a time, as Rob wanted to charge his toothbrush, and I wanted to charge my razor, but we couldn’t which was a tad annoying, but not exactly that inconvenient. Another odd thing, you couldn’t remove the tray for the tea and coffee making facilities (a kettle) without taking the stuff off the tray, as the drawer in which they were contained didn’t pull out far enough…

The lack of air-conditioning is a hefty drawback of the place, as it was a hot night and even just under a single sheet I struggled to sleep and got all sweaty.

There restaurant and lounge bar served good food at reasonable prices, I had a ceasar salad that was pretty darn big, and filled with decent non-processed chicken. We also enjoying the first pints of the holiday, the first of many.

By 3:40am we were on our way to meet the rest of the guys at check-in.

btw, the beds at Bewleys can take the strain of someone jumping up and down on them as Rob enthusiastically demonstrated within seconds of getting into the room.

The Bewley Hotel Group