As I had gone to bed pretty early (around 11), I was up at 7 for an early workout. Luckily, there were no lingering effects of all the beer. I had a 10am train to Leeds to visit my family so I checked out of the Aloft and caught the Merseyrail train at Moorfields station, switching to the Transpennine Express train at Liverpool South Parkway (Lime Street was still closed). I reached Leeds around noon and spent a pleasant afternoon with my uncle and cousins. My cousins took me to a great Indian restaurant, Akbar’s, for dinner where we shared the largest Naan I have ever seen. Beer provided for scale:
After dinner, my cousin dropped me at the Leeds Marriott for the night where I watched some NFL football on Sky Sports. By this time, I had found a taker for my extra Maribor ticket. He was going to pay me just about half of what I paid so that was good. He was driving to the match from Vienna. Let’s hope he makes it.
In the morning, the concierge lounge was closed (I’m Gold btw) so breakfast was in the restaurant. Not surprisingly, it was pretty dead for a business hotel on a Monday morning. I grabbed an Uber to the Leeds Bradford Airport and checked in for my KLM flight to Amsterdam (then Graz the next morning). This is a small grubby airport, but it does have a PP lounge, the Yorkshire Premium Lounge, which was very crowded this Monday morning.
I had noticed some fog as we approached the airport, but nothing too thick. It apparently got much thicker, because about ½ hour before boarding, we got word that our inbound aircraft was delayed. Then about an hour later, we were told that it had been diverted to Teesside Airport (about 90 minutes drive away). We were told to report to a gate, where an airport contract worker led us back out through passport control (back into the UK) and outside where a bus was supposed to take us to Teesside. That worker left and we were all wandering around when someone spotted a couple of buses. We all trudged over there and eventually (after some confusion), boarded these buses to take us to Teesside Airport. My front row seat:
We reached Teesside airport (which appeared to be fairly recently built) in about 90 minutes and surprised the heck out of the 2 security staff there when 75 passengers showed up. We did find an open PP lounge there too, which was kind of funny as there weren’t even any incoming/outgoing flights that I could see besides our unscheduled one. After all the scotch was gone
we boarded our KLM Cityflyer E190 and finally headed to AMS.
A snack was served on this short flight, and we arrived around 6:30 PM, about six hours behind schedule.
I checked in at the Airport Sheraton (snooty check-in staff) and dropped my things. I bought a R/T train ticket to Centraal and headed in to town for a few hours. I had planned on a museum or two for the afternoon, but that plan was lost in the Leeds fog. Instead I made do with a visit to Gollum, a great beer bar with an excellent cheese platter.
After a few hours there, I was exhausted (and tipsy) and headed back to the Sheraton. My flight to Graz was showing on time for the next morning.
Couple of Amsterdam night pics:
