universal traveller....

A couple of weeks ago, C. and I discussed our plans for Easter:

Me: "I'm thinking I might pop across to Den Haag to see John and Andrea for a few days over the bank holiday.  They've been there for a few months now and it's apparently a good time to pay them a visit. You're welcome too, of course."

C: "Oh yes.  Good idea.  What do you think you might get up to?

Me: "Well, the Masters Golf is on, so we'll spend 4 days watching that.  There's some cricket as well, so we'll probably watch that too.  The plan would be to spend something like 16-18 hours a day for four days on the sofa in front of the TV drinking beer, BBQ-ing and watching sport.

C: "Right...."

Me: "We might find the time before the golf starts to hit the bars in Amsterdam though.  John and Bob [two of my other friends, both with mildly toxic lifestyles] will be over there at the same time."

Inexplicably, my wife elected to give the trip a miss.

It was brilliant.

We're pretty old now, so we didn't get up to anything too crazy and did an awful lot of snoozing on the sofa in front of the telly as the beer took its inevitable toll, but it was great.  We basically did exactly the same stuff as we would have done had we all been in England, only in a foreign location (....and frankly, Den Haag is not that much more difficult for me to get to than driving to Oxford, which is where they used to live).

Next time I go, I was thinking I might actually get out and have a look at some museums and galleries and stuff.  They have that sort of thing there, right? 

Seemed like a nice town from what little I saw of it....

Marvellous few days.  Not exactly restful and I'm probably now a few braincells lighter than I was before I left, but it was marvellous all the same.

It's true what they say, isn't it?  Travel really does broaden the mind.