Fortunately, once all that was done, we didn’t have far to walk to the bus stop and didn’t have long to wait for a bus either. By 1030 we were checked in and waiting to board our flight to London Heathrow. There was just one small problem; there wasn’t a British Airways plane anywhere to be seen and thus started another fiasco.
When the plane eventually arrived, a quick turnaround got everyone and everything loaded, but, by then we’d missed the Air Traffic Control slot, something we were informed about as we all sat ready for takeoff. Not usually an issue, but in this instance, we were informed that the next slot required a wait of one and half hours. Thankfully, as luck would have it, while the First Officer was relaying this bad news to the passengers, the Captain received confirmation that another slot had opened up and we could takeoff immediately. As you can imagine, there was a collective and audible sigh of relief in the cabin and, as it turns out, the new slot was a “short cut” and got us into London Heathrow five minutes ahead of schedule, but then the wheels fell off.
Having landed safely, we were informed that another aircraft was at our gate and we had to wait for it to be pushed back. Fair enough, no problem, or so we thought!
The next announcement informed us that the plane at our gate was being pushed back and we would be able to disembark shortly. This was swiftly followed by yet another announcement informing us that the plane at our gate had developed technical problems and could no longer be moved, but, wait, there was another gate! At this point we’d been sitting on the ground for half an hour, only to be told the jetway at the new gate had developed a fault and we essentially now had no gate assigned!
Eventually, after an hour of taxiing around Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport, a gate was secured and we disembarked. However, by this time, we only had half an hour to change terminals and get to our connecting flight before its departure.
Of course, nothing is simple these days and the walkway from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2 was no longer in operation. Instead, we had to catch a bus, go through passport control, again, and clear security, again, getting us to the gate with minutes to spare.
By now, though, we both had a headache from listening to screaming kids and having endured a sick child, poor little mite, who coughed the entire flight from Gibraltar, we were both bursting to go to the loo, we were starving and dying of thirst! Thank goodness Roy had the good sense to make us bacon butties last night for the journey and he managed to find somewhere to buy us some water, all of which went down like a treat before we boarded the flight; by a sheer miracle we actually made it to Dublin. To crown matters, though, Roy had an enormous man sitting next to him on the first flight and an even larger woman sitting next to him on the second one, leaving him with precious little space, but he wasn’t giving up that middle armrest under any circumstances!
What we hoped would be our final calamity, was our luggage that didn’t make it to Dublin with us and, with us touring, we wondered how exactly the airline was going to get our bags to us. Guess we’ll be doing some shopping soon, but fortunately Elaine always packs a set of clothing in our hand luggage, to be sure, to be sure.
Our next challenge was finding our hired car, after a mix up with the support staff member, who erroneously informed us that are car had to be collected in the city centre. After Roy told the individual to have another look at our reservation, miraculously, our car appeared in the multi-storey carpark we were standing in. However, before the car was unlocked remotely for us and before we signed the contract, we had to give the car a looking over and take photographs of any existing damage; straight forward enough, right! Nope! We had one more tiny insignificant detail to deal with; it was a black car, parked in a bay that didn’t have any lighting. So, here’s us, with iPhone torches switched on, scanning the car and all we could see is our own reflections on any photographs we took.
By the time the car was unlocked, it was getting dark and we still had about an hour and a half’s drive ahead of us to get to our hotel in Athlone, but we had absolutely no idea how, other than how to switch the car on and change the “gear lever” to forward or reverse to get us to our intended destination. We had no idea how to switch the air on, we barely figured out how to open the windows, we didn’t know how to adjust the driver’s seat properly or the steering wheel so Roy could drive the car, but we both decided it was probably a very good idea not to fiddling with anything on the control panel and just get to the hotel before we loose our daylight and until we had the time to figure out how to operate this damn car; talk about two country bumpkins in town! That’ll teach us for hiring a Tesla.
Needless to say, we were relieved to reach the hotel without incident, but when we got to our hotel room and found it infested with spiders, all we could do was laugh, while Roy spent the next fifteen minutes swiping spiders with a pillow.
Fortunately our day ended on a much better note; a call from Keenan, who had been trying to give us instructions via text on how to operate the car as we flew down the motorway at 120 Km/hr. What a carry-on, but we enjoyed a beautiful sunset, nonetheless.
With all this malarkey, our hope was that we’d paid the piper in advance and a great holiday on the island of Ireland awaited us!
