We were in Ireland for 3 weeks and had a great time. The trip home was another matter....
(Warning this is pretty wordy so it's in segments.)
For our last day of vacation we had only one worry - will we get to the airport on time? How wrong were we? That was the only thing that went right!
Since we were in a residential area away from hotels and their taxi stands, we needed to arrange for our ride to the airport and trust that it went okay. The day before we had approached a cabbie and asked him to pick us up at 7:30.
"I'll be there or I'll make sure someone else is!" he declared. He then jotted down our address on a scrap of paper. "32 CPE 7:30" apparently meant 32 Clarinda Park East at 7:30 a.m. Just then, someone jumped in the back and off he sped.
Would he forget? Would he lose that scrap of paper? Would he decide to sleep in?
Nope. He was there as promised. Not only that but he also took a shortcut through Dublin that put us in the airport in half the time I had allotted. As a result, we were there at 8:00 for an 11:05 flight. (Two hours would have been fine for this flight within the European Union.)
We checked our bags, and proceeded to the security screening. Linda went first and put her bag in one plastic bin, then into another bin went her laptop with her passport (with boarding pass tucked inside).
I went next doing the same but I took a little longer and a couple of people came between us.
When we passed through the x-ray machine, Linda grabbed her stuff being careful to get it all. I grabbed my bag and laptop and joined her next to a pole where I put my laptop back in its bag.
When we were all organized, Linda mentioned, "I almost forgot to pick up my passport." A lightbulb went on over my head. I hadn't picked up mine!!!
I patted all my pockets, looked at my carry-on bag and knew that I'd lost it. It had been a few minutes but I ran back to the screeners behind the counter and told them.
Dublin Airport has a conveyor belt that takes the bins, lowers them a little and rushes the empties back to the beginning where they're available for the next traveler. I was sure someone would declare, "Hey, there's a passport here" and give it to a security person. Tick, tock. Nope. Tick tock. Nope.
Then a sympathetic security person stopped doing anything else and ran back and forth looking under the conveyor belt, pulling apart the stacked bins, and asking everyone she could if they'd seen a passport. This went on for at least 15 minutes during which time I pondered my life in Dublin while Linda would go on. (And, of course, there's the possibility that someone would use that passport for something unpleasant.)
Finally, our "personal security assistant" gave up and told us she would ask for help from a supervisor. The supervisor knew just what to do....."For me....would you mind checking all of your pockets and bags once more?"
I checked mine. Linda checked the passport holder on a string around her neck - her passport was there. Then she checked her purse - her passport was there. WAIT! They can't both be hers! When she was unloading her plastic bins, she had seen a passport sitting in a empty bin and assumed it was hers. One had gone in her purse and the other into her passport holder. Profuse apologies to everyone.
Whew! Disaster averted. Clear skies ahead, right?
Except that our plane to Heathrow was running late. How late? Hard to say, it flies back and forth and it hadn't taken off on it's way from Heathrow to Dublin yet. Wait, wait....finally it's in the air and we learn that it'll be 90 minutes late. So we arrived at the airport at 8:00 for a flight that wouldn't take off for 4-1/2 hours.