Day 59 -Terrorist Alert

All’s well, am up early and about to get ready when I see there is no shower curtain… blimey what do I have to do to have something go right?  Well, I’ll have to go without a shower this morning, I can’t believe that I didn’t notice it last night.

I finish packing and make my way to reception to check out.  I complain about the shower curtain and have a conversation about the charges.  I arrived at 4am on thursday morning and upon checking my credit card transactions find they have charged me for an additional night.  Now, to be honest, I wasn’t going to challenge it as I received an email from AirBnB yesterday to say they have refunded me in full for the other place, but given the ants and move to another room, no  towels and now the shower curtain I do ask if they can forgo the additional night.  Of course they won’t and the best they will offer is a $25 discount.. not much, but better than nothing.

Needless to say I’m not in the best of moods this morning, but at least I am on time to catch the shuttle bus to the station at Rosslyn to catch the onward bus to the airport.  Quite an uneventful journey really, but the driver is a bit strange… she is talking to herself and gesticulating for most of the journey; quite fascinating to watch and helps to pass the time.

I arrive at the airport in plenty of time.  It’s a very strange airport, in my experience. There is nothing here, no shops or coffee bars etc.

The Aer Lingus desk isn’t open yet so I find a seat opposite then I will be able to see when someone turns up.  At 1pm there is activity so I go over, but the check in desk isn’t opening until 1.30pm.  Now I normally check in online and bag drop, however due to changing my flights I have to check in at the airport.  On the orginal booking I paid £50 for an extra legroom seat, which they told me would carrried forward to this booking and be sorted out for me at the airport.

I go off to the loo and I see a lone restaurant so pop in there for a bowl of soup… it’s very good.

Back to the check in desk and there is a small queue.. typical… it doesn’t take long to get to the desk and then it all begins…

Firstly they don’t seem to have seen a travel authorisation before,

so there is plenty of brow furrowing and whispered conversations.. I say, ‘The Embassy said these are quite usual, lots of people lose their passports’… anyway there follows a flurry of tapping on the computer and all seems ok.  Then I mention about the seat.. sorry we can’t give you an extra legroom seat as the flight is fully booked.  I ask for a refund then, nope I’ll have to talk to customer services about that… sigh!  They eventually issue me with my boarding passes.

Ok, I now make my way into security to get through to the departure lounge.  What an effing nightmare…

First guy, looks at the travel certificate several times.. looks at me… talks to another guy… goes off and talks to a woman.. comes back and tells me to wait over there, his supervisor will come and speak to me.. I say ‘The Embassy said these are quite usual, lots of people lose their passports’.. no reply.

The supervisor arrives, meanwhile other passengers coming through security try hard not to be obvious wondering why I’ve been singled out. The supervisor takes me to one side still in full view, inspects the travel document,

asks for some photo id, I give him my drivers license and he puts them both through a machine and says ‘you will have to be patted down and your luggage throughly inspected’ I say ‘The Embassy said these are quite usual, lots of people lose their passports’ he says, you don’t have a passport so we will do extra security checks.

I am taken to the head of the xray machines queue, as I go through the body scan machine they take me to one side and pat me down, then I have to go back through the machine.  The supervisor then takes me to another desk and says they will now empty my bags and go through everything and another woman will pat me down. I say I’ve just been patted down, but he says it doesn’t matter that’s a different section so they will do it again. I say ‘All I did was lose my passport. I have a travel authorisation from my Embassy I’m not trying to smuggle anything!’ He ignores this and a woman officer comes and redoes the body check which is extremely thorough, I am beginning to feel quite upset. All this in full view of everyone. Meanwhile the Supervisor is emptying out my bag and going through everything inside and out.

Eventually I am allowed to proceed. By this time I’m deeply upset and feel completely humiliated.

At least the departure side has more going on.. there is a duty free shop and a few eateries and other shops…

The flight is ok, but the plane itself is really small

and indeed fully booked, so not an altogether comfortable flight and I’m not able to get any sleep at all. Will land at Dublin in the morning.. so Day – 60