Travel Woes...

I am beyond eager to recall our travels in Dublin for you but the the angsty weevil inside me requires me to recount how we got there first. 

We left Cowtown on a gorgeous Wednesday. Our friends and families had sent us off with well wishes, full luggage and copious amounts of tobacco. We sat in the airport and hacked out our remaining business and emails. Now when we told people that we paid $300 all in for a non-stop flight to London DURING THE OYMPICS, the typical response we got was that we would probably have chickens in our lap. I honestly didn't care if I had to stand the whole time. I can now say that I had a legitimately great experience with Air Transat. Super nice crew and the pilot flew super evenly. He even inserted interesting tidbits during the flight like, "you can now see Nunavut. You might as well look because it's probably the only time most of you will see it." I was WATCHING The Vow and would have chosen to watch an embarrassing movie in peace if it were up to me. Anywho. We got meals -with wine! -and one of our flight attendants had name tag flare like Jennifer Aniston in Office Space, which I felt was worth mentioning. We flew through the night and actually never saw the sun set. Which I guess tends to happen when you fly right along with it. We landed in London Gatwick to partly clouded sun and MASSES of Olympic paraphernalia. 

Now here we ran into some trouble because we booked our own connecting flight. We got through customs, where we had our very encounter abroad with the questions, "What do you mean you're students? How did you pay for this trip?" We just thought 'students' sounded better than 'unemployed'. We had to go through security to get to departures but got through no problem. Once through that, we tried to find our gate because it wasn't listed on our ticket. It said it wouldn't be listed until an hour before our flight. Red flag? Not at that point. This is Europe, we thought. They must do things differently, we thought. 

I will insert here: FUCK RyanAir. 

Anyway, we had beer and breakfast and killed time while we waited. At this point, having not slept on the plane due to turbulence and ALL THE FUN THINGS TO DO, we were both fighting sleep pretty steeply. Lovely miss Karin's movie trove that she sent us away with definitely worked it's magic here. I nodded asleep and snapped back awake to The Usual Suspects for almost an hour. Finally, our gate came up. And here's how that works: the gate goes up, you have a half hour to get there and then they close it.

We got in line, had EVERYTHING ready. "Oh I'm sorry Miss," they said it what was a pleasant British accent two and a half seconds earlier. "You don't have your Visa stamp. You have to go back to the check in desk. You probably won't make this flight." 

What the faaaaaaaaaaa... So we ran. We ran with our (40 lb) backpacks through the airport. I'm almost in tears. Moozh is doing his fix-it thing, which I was so grateful for. We both smell ripe. We are both a little less entranced with England. 

The gentleman at the airport desk said, "Oh you're flying with RyanAir..." and then gave us the look someone gives you when you tell them you're gonna do P90X. The look of "You poor sap. I've been there." The look that should have a pint of beer attached. And then this young woman, who looked like Dobby in a Gatwick uniform, came and helped us fix things. She took us through back doors to the check in desks and helped explain what our situation was. It ended up costing us an extra $400 to change our flight over. all because of something that isn't a Europe thing, not even a Gatwick thing. Just a RyanAir thing. 

Oh, HA, and this is all on our third anniversary. 

Rant over. Welcome to the world of international travel. A little angry. A lot wiser. And with more practice under my belt of not worrying about the things I can't control.