We booked our flight to New York last November and decided to fly with Aer Lingus via Dublin for two reasons. Firstly, you can do US immigration pre-clearance in Dublin, meaning no waiting in immigration queues in New York after your seven hour flight. And secondly, I realised at the time of booking that had we gone straight from Cardiff to New York via Dublin, we would have been landing at the equivalent of 11pm GMT. This was NOT happening with a two and a half year old in tow. So we decided to make a half day pit stop in Dublin on the Saturday to see our families before travelling out on Sunday morning and landing at a reasonable time for BattleKid. It just so happened that even with two bookings for our two sets of flights (Cardiff to Dublin and Dublin to New York, and the return legs) our flights worked out cheaper than if we had chosen to flown out of London or Manchester.
A few days before our departure for New York City (via Dublin) I got the usual email from Aer Lingus to say online check-in was open. I was about to ignore it as I usually do when something caught my eye. Our departure time had changed from 10.45 to 9.15. Now I’d had an email a few months back to say our original flight time from Dublin to Cardiff, on our return leg, had changed but didn’t realise that the outbound journey time had also changed! Cue a mad flurry of messages home to say we were arriving earlier than expected for those meeting us at the airport.
As a result we were up at 6am that Saturday morning and swiftly got dressed, ate some toast and packed the car before setting off for the airport at 7.10am. Traffic was light enough at that hour and we got to the airport at 8am, checked in and went through security. We got some presents for our Dads, got some euros and dollars and then water before scoffing a quick bite to eat. We were called for boarding at 9am and had a nice flight into Dublin, landing at 10.25am.
We were met by two of my sisters, my future brother-in-law and my nephew. My future BiL had driven my Dad’s car out so that we could take it to see BattleDad’s family before heading across the city to stay overnight with mine. We headed for BattleDad’s folks’ house but they had already headed over to the hotel we were having lunch in so we made our way there and had a catch up before my sister-in-law Sue and her boys arrived for lunch. We also got a chance to see BattleDad’s brother and his family before we said our goodbyes after 4 and headed across the M50 to my folks’ house.
Everyone was there and a proper “chipper” meal was on it’s way. My parents had just arrived back from Portugal with news they had finally bought a place over there. It was celebrations all round and holiday planning too. After a relaxing catch up after dinner we got BattleKid to bed and weren’t a million miles behind him, in anticipation of our longer flight the next morning.
Stay tuned tomorrow to see how BattleKid got on with the longer flight and more importantly, whether Mum and Dad survived it!
Cath x
Blimey, good job you properly read that email. So pleased you got to spend some time with your families too.
Imagine if I hadn’t!