Let me tell you about how I accidentally flew into the wrong airport in Ireland.
I know. You’re probably like “How does that even happen in 2015?” DELTA, that’s how.
The morning that we were set to leave for Ireland I was in the bathroom retching thanks to my severe anxiety about leaving my daughter and maybe also the fact that I am absolutely terrified of flying.
And because anxiety is a tricky little cyclical beast, that turned into more anxiety about “what if I vomited on the plane.” I could not even handle that. So what I did was, I took a double dose of Emetrol to stop the nausea. And also a Dramamine for the flight.
As I am a person of very tiny stature who typically takes child-sized portions of medication, this was maybe not the best idea. Especially because I did not realize either of those medications made a person drowsy. By the time we got to the airport I was feeling a little bit foggy.
When we arrived we discovered that our flight was delayed, which was going to cause us to miss our connection. We went to the service desk to see about switching flights and were told there were no flights to Dublin in the next 24 hours, which I found hard to believe on account of how Dublin is a fairly popular place and it was two days before Saint Patrick’s Day. I was pretty sure Dublin was basically the main place people who wanted to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland wanted to fly to.
And also because I could SEE other flights to Dublin listed on the flight board, although given my current state those were starting to look somewhat blurry.
After what seemed like forever the desk agent said, “Don’t worry, I got this. What do you know about Ireland?” And I was all “THAT IT IS A PLACE I’D LIKE TO GET TO” in my head because I am not rude out loud. That is how you know I’m southern.
Then he told us that what he was going to do was fly us in to the Shannon Airport, which he said was just under two hours from Dublin, and have the Delta shuttle take us to the Dublin Airport, which is where our hotel and rental car were waiting. He assured us that Shannon wasn’t too far from Dublin and that they would take care of getting us there once we arrived.
At this point, I should have called our travel agency because they gave us a number if we had any issues but I was too busy arranging our bags into a makeshift bed so that I could lie down on them because apparently I am heavily affected by motion sickness medicine. So we said fine because we’d been there forever and I would have agreed to anything at that point on account of how I was maybe not awake.
Once we boarded the plane the pilot came on the speaker and told us to expect about two hours of heavy turbulence over the Atlantic. Because turbulence on a plane over water is something that I can be totally calm about. Except the opposite of that. So that sent a current of anxiety through me that had me so freaked out I very logically thought it might be a good idea to take another motion sickness pill. Spoiler alert: it was not actually a good idea.
(And that is the story about how I woke up in Ireland with my legs lying in the lap of the stranger sitting next to me, who kindly brushed off my intrusiveness and then in all seriousness asked me to add him to my LinkedIn network. I COULD NOT MAKE THIS UP IF I TRIED, Y’ALL.)
When we arrived at our connection in London I saw about a billion flights to Dublin listed on the flight board and wondered why we were not flying TO DUBLIN. But our connection was short, I was hazy, and we didn’t want to miss it so we got on the plane to Shannon.
In Shannon I woke up just in time to see us land on a tiny little airstrip next to a field full of sheep. Then we dutifully went through customs, collected our luggage, and made our way to the transportation desk whereupon the attendant told us there was no such thing as a shuttle to the Dublin Airport and that they couldn’t help us at all and that there were eight flights into Dublin that Delta could have put us on that day and they had no idea why they flew us into Shannon.
Which, BY THE WAY, is not just under two hours from Dublin. It’s more like four hours from Dublin. Like, COMPLETELY ACROSS THE COUNTRY FROM DUBLIN.
And then I had a brilliant idea and said “Well, we’ll just go explain this to the rental car place and have them switch our car to this airport.” Except that of all the rental car places housed at the Shannon Airport, ours was not one of them. Of course it wasn’t.
We ended up having to take a cab to Limerick to catch a bus to Dublin, which cost us over $100 Euros cash as soon as we set foot in Ireland. J says that the silver lining was that the cab driver showed him how to drive on the other side of the road which made him feel more comfortable driving the rental car later that day and also that the bus route was really pretty.
I do not know about either of these things because a combination of jetlag and Dramamine meant that I slept almost the entire time.
It really was a huge misstep on Delta’s part. We didn’t get into Dublin until late that evening so it cost us an entire day of our trip and a lot of cash and really messed up our itinerary.
But it also made for a sweet memory (not to be confused with a good memory, Delta. Luckily for you, I’m a girl who likes to look on the bright side.) Because we landed in the middle of Ireland with no idea what to do and we worked together and we figured it out and we had a little adventure.
I mean, I’d have rather spent the day exploring the megaliths in Drogheda the way we had planned, because you know, I can ride a bus anytime but I can’t always visit the neolithic passage tombs that I’ve wanted to see ever since I was in college. I’m not bitter.
So it all worked out in the end, and I’m glad J and I were together to make the best of it.
PLUS, if I ever want to get into the cloud-based-tech industry in Barcelona, I made a new LinkedIn friend on the plane.
(More from our trip to Ireland: Saint Patrick’s Day and Visiting Blarney Castle, What To Pack For A Trip To Ireland, What To Do and See in Dingle Ireland)
