The Banjul Challenge – Still in Charlotte – January 12, 2023
Jan 16th, 2023 by rallyadmin
1/12/2023 – Still in Charlotte. Hope early. In the car with Barbara. Off to the airport. Not much traffic (at least by Charlotte early morning standards. There’s no line at the Delta counter. (I must be way early. I am.)
Board just before 9 and depart a few minutes early. On the flight to DTW, a flight attendant comnes down the aisle with a gift back of snacks (“for the 5 hour wait in DTW”) and an apology for yesterday’s cluster-f*&k. (That’s never happened before!) Arrive DTW about 30 minutes early. Wait 5 hours for flight to Amsterdam.
Arrive Amsterdam on time, depart for Madrid on time and arrive on time. Today’s flight couldn’t have been different from yesterday’s. It’s now Friday the 13th.
I’d pre-booked a taxi from the airport to the hotel. I’m almost three hours early for checkin but I drop my bags and head off for some sight seeing.
The hotel is a very small boutique hotel that I found on booking.com. These euro-boutique hotels are usually in a converted apartment building so the rooms are usually small but clean and sometimes inexpensive. The one, Met Madrid, is all of the above: a converted apartment floor, small’ish room and inexpensive. But it’s very close to the sights in the center of Madrid (just off the Plaza Opera) and very highly rated on booking.
It turns out that trying to kill three hours after flying for 18 hours is rather difficult. And it’s not the thing you really want to do when what you really want to do is take a rather long nap. But I wander about, take a lot of pictures and finally stop for a baguette with jambon and a beer at the Mercado de San Miguel, a open air market. It’s not really an open air market with food for sale, more an open air market with small food stalls that serve standup food with wine or beer. Regardless, it’s prefect lunch for the day.
I’ve finally used up the three hours and head to the hotel to check in. Handover my passport for registration, shown the room and given the keys (room key, hotel key and the front door key.)
The room is modern, very clean, spotless really, and fully equipped for 2 people. As is usual in euro-boutique, definitely not room to squeeze in a third person. Nonetheless, it’s perfect for me.
Check my email and whatsapp. Clemo’s already having issues with the car. Turn on the telly to help me stay awake. Answer a few emails. Channel hop with the telly remote to try to stay awake. Get a whatsapp call from Clemo. The car runs fine after it starts but doesn’t want to start after being shut down. He and the guys he’s convoying with are working on it. Finally, I give up and take a nap.
Up again at 6:30 felling quite refreshed. Outside for another walkabout and dinner. Find a small pizza shop with excellent thin crust pizza and a beer. Back to the hotel and to bed.
Obi
