Welcome to Hawkes & Brown's Holiday

Our flight left Luton around 9:25am, after a small delay for the cases to be loaded. After a bumpy start, with a little turbulence as we flew through the cloud covering Bedfordshire we had a smooth flight over the Pyrenees … Read more

Having moved our flight time forward to 2pm, we calculated we needed to leave for the airport on the 11am bus. With this in mind, we ate breakfast and packed our little cases. Despite them being small cases that fitted … Read more

Due to the length of time the night parade took to move all the floats along the parade route, we didn’t get back to the airport until after the last bus had returned to the hotel. Consequently, the first thing … Read more

Today is a bit of a red-letter day, and in many respects, the sole reason we visited Holland during April. Spring flowers! To be specific, tulips. Thinking ahead, we’d booked a hire car, knowing the easiest way to travel to … Read more

Our day began with a hearty buffet breakfast. The choice of breakfast items was very different from the Spanish hotels we’ve stayed in elsewhere. They had the usual selection of breads (commonly found in continental hotels), pastries (inc croissant, pain-au-chocolat, … Read more

I’ll skip through the first parts really quickly, strap yourself in, here we go!Arrive at Amsterdam airport, through security, find the free shuttle bus to the hotel (6 mins from the airport), and drop off bags at the hotel. We … Read more

As the well-known phrase goes q “all good things come to an end”, and so must our road trip. Our flight doesn’t take off until 10pm tonight and we are determined to cram in as much as we can between … Read more

Our last full day. Sigh. Breakfast was included in our stay because we slept at Best Western. But don’t get excited dear reader, the breakfast room was dismal. Polystyrene plates and small tables. A classic sign they have no on-site … Read more

We began our day at Cafe Maddison, a French bistro-style cafe. The internal decor was a galaxy apart from the classic American diner we ate breakfast in yesterday. In some ways, it reminded me of the Recoco Lounge at the … Read more

Our day began in the Gateway Diner, a classic American diner. A similar mix of clientele and few to no children, mirroring the experience we had yesterday morning. The atmosphere was also a loud hubbub of chatter, which drowned out … Read more