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Monday, October 29

Getting to Dublin

With the same friends that went to Oktoberfest with us, we traveled to Dublin Ireland.  None of us had been so it was a good long weekend trip to plan.  Our flight departed from Frankfurt airport at 7:10 so we planned to leave Nürnberg at 3.  That would give us enough time for dinner and parking.  We arrived in Frankfurt Altstadt and had a quick dinner at Shahi Curry.  The concept is simple, everything is premade and the food sits on a steam table.  There are 6- 8 (vegetarian and non vegetarian curries), customers get to pick any two and get a choice of rice or roti/naan.  The food was acceptable for a quick dinner.  

The driver in our group had her own car so she’d done research on cheap parking at Frankfurt airport.  Unfortunately, this parking lot was on the other side of the airport so it took us 25- 30 minutes to get to the lot.  When the shuttle bus driver asked us the flight name and departure time, he was astounded by our response, “Aer Lingus at 7:10.”  Looking at his watch, 6:10, he couldn’t believe we’d given ourselves less than 60 minutes to check in.  He repeatedly said it wasn’t enough time.  For a bus driver, he was kind and reckless.  He was speeding through the slow driving zones, only for us.  

Once we arrived, we ran to the Aer Lingus counter and the check in person was packing up his belongings and leaving the counter.  The husband and the driver in our group begged him to let us check in and he refused.  It was 6:26 and too late to check in for the Dublin flight.  He left and we were left wondering our next option.  We then approached a lady who was working at the information counter for Aer Lingus (last minute reservations).  She refused and suggested we book the flight the next morning for Dublin.  Unfortunately none of us wanted to stay in Frankfurt for the night so we asked and asked again.  Finally we started begging the woman to let us check in.  She finally caved and wrote us a boarding pass to get through security.  We ran to the gate (the fastest any one of us has ever ran in our lives).  

When we arrived at the gate, a younger guy was printing paperwork for the flight.  A call was made for all passengers to board the flight.  We told him we didn’t have a ticket and asked could we get one there?  He refused because he had already printed the passenger list and couldn’t print a new list or tickets. So we decide to stand in line, hoping to get in.  Nope.  The guy that walked away from us at the main counter was checking in the passengers and told us he couldn’t let us board without a ticket.  Having gone through the first hurdle, we refused to leave.  We requested to the younger guy, again, to print our tickets.  He called his manager to override and she told him the woman that wrote our boarding passes to get us through the gate was in big trouble for allowing us to get through less than 45 minutes before the flight departure.  She then allowed the override for the tickets and the younger guy printed them.  

We did make our flight that evening to Dublin but now we know we have to be there 45 minutes before the flight departure.  Also, Aer Lingus doesn’t allow online check an important note to be aware of.

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