Event: Salute 2010, ExCel London

As I didn't found the time earlier, I am now (almost a week later) writing down my experiences.
This was my second trip to Salute. I suppose I will go every year....

I went with a couple of friends. Her a list of our group.
- Umfufu, the butt-naked Zebra killer
- Janus, a stranded alien, hitchhiking from Venus to Uranus
- Bokito, the double-action lapdancer
- 'Nee hoor !" Endie-pendie
- Cuppycake
Who's who on the pictures is for you to guess and for me to know :)

We decided this time to take an extra day in London. This extra day we would use to do one of the following activities:
- Imperial War Museum
- British Museum
- Games Workshop

Well, here my experiences;

Thursday 22 April
We travelled to Schiphol about 14:00 and arrived at London Luton airport about 18:00. There would be a taxi waiting for us to bring us to a hotel near the ExCel centre (which hotel is a secret, becaus it is a good hotel and I wouldn't like to see it overbooked next year).
What a taxi ! Downhill the speed never exceeded 70Mph and uphill the thing didn't go faster than 20Mph on the Highway !
Well....about 48 hours later we arrived at the hotel, and checked in....
We earlier decided to share rooms to reduce the cost, thus being able to buy more miniatures :) :) :)
So we checked in, went to our rooms and....there was only one double-bed.....the horror !
We went on the double to the reception to explain that we where indeed friends, but not that close friends ! Luckely, they understood and we got new rooms with seperate beds.....ah...relief...
Finally we ate some food (mixed-grill for me !) and went to sleep.

Friday 23 April
We decide to go to the Imperial War Museum. The collection of vehicles is limited, but the collection in the basement with uniforms and artefacts is huge.
So, from the ExCel to the train and the tube, the rest was a bit of footwork:

Awake and ready......I think

And a terribly interesting picture made by Cuppycake....

Before we enter, first the refreshments...

Aaahhh, the destination for this day...

Aren't they lovely

"mmmm...feels familiar..."

planes...

Jagdpanther

Sherman

Landraider... ;)

Guns....

Well, if you want to see more, the Imperial War museum is somewhere in London. After the museum we did have some food and went to the Games-Workshop store. The store was al little disappionting because we expected a much larger store, but is was quite small (and did not have the furioso dreadnought :(  ).
About 17:00 we went back to the hotel to feed, again in the (very crowded!) tube and the train.....

Grrooo....nomnomnom...Grrooo...nomnomnom...

And now, the observation photo's of the feeding...

nibble...nibble...nibble...

nom...nom...nom...nom

nom...nom...nom...nom...

NOM!...NOM!...NOM!...

...NOM!...NOM!...

After the dinner we went to bed ofcourse.

Saturday 24 April

Salute day ! Somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00 we stood in the cue, with Darth Vader and a number of stormtroopers....After 20 minutes an some guy from Salute came by to announce that the firechief disapproved the eventhall because of the fire hazard...at Salute the walkways are wider than any other miniatures-event I know of (I don'tknow that many though)...well, more waiting = bugger. 

The man should come once to crisis in Belgium then he'll be cured.

Finally the hall opened and we surged in. First we had to visit the Forge-World stand to buy the event-only mini's and WAB 2.0 ofcourse. I wanted to pay with creditcard, but they had a slight problem with the machine. Right in front of me the guy from Forge-World smashed the thing on the table to demand obedience......the machine broke completely...

So, I paid in chash and went to the other stands...what a nice shiny day !

Now finally some pictures of the very nice demo's taken at Salute:

Somewhere between 15:00 and 16:00 I must have gone on the autopilot. I walked by every demo because I didn't want to miss a thing...and now, I can't rember anything...

We ate dinner about 20:00 or so and did tell eachother of our spoils and what we need to buy at Crisis, later this year in Antwerp, Belgium. With sour feet and a lot of paper, resin, lead and plastic, we had dinner and went to our rooms.

Sunday 25 April

Quite uneventful and boring. We just wanted to go home as quick as possible to drool and work on our newest spoils, but it was not to be that easy....

We left the hotel around 10:00  and did have a fast taxi this time. We left to Stansted Airport, only to find a big part of the Highway closed....darn !

Our flight was scheduled to board around 15:30, so we had some time left...doing nothing. Every year that we went to an event in the UK most of the time 2 of the 5 guys will have to open their bags for inspection, this time it was my turn...I was a little paniced...you never know how they treat your sacred mini's...but the guy was nice and let me unpack the things....

The flight arrived in the Netherlands about 17:30, I was home at 19:30.

Salute to you !