We flew from London Heathrow on the British Airways direct service to Dallas Fort Worth that left at 11.45am. We decided to travel down the night before, as the check in was still early if there was a delay on the M25. Hilton have a new hotel at Terminal 5 – although this is a little like a Ryanair flight. The terminal 5 part of the address is definitely poetic licence – after travelling around terminal 5 and then up and down the motorway we eventually found it the other side of the M25. I suppose you could say it was fairly near – as near as Ryanair flying you into a city and then putting you on a bus to actually get there. Then “we” had to park the car – another new car park called Click Park. Another one at Terminal 5. Apart from the concierge in the Hilton having never heard of it, and nobody actually knowing where it was, the manager resorted to google maps and printed one off for Paul – who at this point was not happy with his travel agent! Not only did he have to park the car, he then had to get back to the terminal, and then back to the hotel. After planning to arrive at 9pm, it was now 10.30pm – well it is us we are talking about! Off he went with the car – I hoped he would be back in time for breakfast. Only half an hour later he arrived saying that went better than expected. A few palms had to be crossed with silver, but he persuaded the car park transfer to take him back to the Hilton – who also had never heard of it and insisted that it was at Terminal 4. Never mind – alls well that ends well.
The flight – spent unfortunately in economy – was not too bad. It was on time, the entertainment system worked, and we had three seats between the two of us. Can’t ask for more really. We landed at 3.15pm local time, and had a relatively short queue to get through immigration. Only a customs form to fill out, as the ESTA has now replaced the green visa waiver form. Finger prints and photo taken, and the bags appeared on the carousel as soon as we got there. That is where the “smooth” bit finished. The queue to get through customs with the bags took about half an hour – Dallas is the third busiest airport in the world, and it sure seemed like it when everyone had to go through security with their form.
We then had to get on the rental car bus, which arrived within about five minutes. A ten minute journey to the rental car building – all major renters are in the same place here – and the only one that had a queue was Hertz. Who had we rented with? Hertz. Paul wanted a Mustang like Steve McQueen had, so I booked him one. Or so I thought. When we got to the front of the queue, it seems they were missing a Mustang. After much tooing and froing they offered us a Chevrolet Camero soft top. “This is much more expensive” said Raschid. “Irrelevant, when you don’t want one” says I. So, the manager thought she knew where a Mustang was, and went to look for it. An hour and a half later we left the rental place in the Camero – Paul wasn’t too upset as this was the car used in the Transformers movie and was his second choice. Had to put the roof down to get the bags in the back seat though, as there wasn’t much of a boot! And we had the promise of a phone call to swap it over as soon as a Mustang appeared. Ha!
We set up the sat nav, which I got them to throw in as we had been waiting for so long, to get to the Renaissance Hotel in Dallas. It said about thirty minutes, so not too long. After a couple of wrong turns, and a good tour all around the airport vicinity, we got on the freeway towards the hotel. Surprised me when we were overtook by a lorry though – we had over 6 litres under the bonnet. I bet he laughed. It didn’t take us long to get there, and we found it quite easily when we got used to the satnav. The difficult bit was we couldn’t hear it very well with the top down, and the sun was shining directly on it so you couldn’t see it very well either. Hey ho.
We checked in, chucked the cases in the room, and went to the bar for a campari. It was about 1.00am on our body clocks, but thirst took over from tiredness. They had campari in the bar, so the hotel passed the first test! The rest of it was not too bad either, but will leave the grand tour until tomorrow!
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