DANIELLE McLAUGHLIN's leisurely start to a family holiday changed gear when a passport problem arose
If you are flying in the face of the recession and holidaying abroad this summer, a word of warning: in the midst of the flip-flops and suncream it’s surprisingly easy to overlook other pesky little details, such as passports.
At Easter we flew from Cork to Rome for a short break with our three children, who are six, four and two. Not usually the most organised of travellers, we were remarkably savvy this time around. Or so we thought.
The bags were packed, we had printed our flight details and we had five passports for five people. We had even checked in online. Like the Titanic, we were invincible.
Wallowing in smugness, we stopped at my parents’ house for Sunday lunch on our way to the airport. There was plenty of time, wasn’t there? All we had to do was drop our bags, walk through security and head for the aircraft.
Our flight was at 3.30pm. At 2.15pm, as my husband parked the car, I sauntered up to the desk with my three remarkably well behaved and still reasonably clean children. I was almost sick with pride.
I didn’t quite register at first what the very pleasant young man behind the desk was saying. So he said it again. Your child’s passport is out of date. I quietly took our four-year-old’s passport and stared at it. Obviously, there was some mistake. I stared at it again. The expiry date stared back, unblinkingly. Not so smug now, it seemed to be saying.
By now my husband had arrived, and we huddled to one side with the very kind airline staff to consider our predicament. Our child could not fly without a valid passport. We were not going to leave without our child. It was Easter Sunday, and our flight was in just over an hour.
The staff gave us a number to call for emergency passports and said they would keep our suitcase checked in while we tried to get a new passport.
We would have panicked, but there wasn’t time. We pushed our daughter into a photo booth and told her not to smile. That wasn’t a problem. She had already gathered she was somehow in the middle of a crisis. Somebody from the emergency passport service would meet us at Anglesea Street Garda station, in the middle of Cork.
Attempting to do anything at speed with three small children is a like trying to scale Kilimanjaro in stilettos. We thought about one of us staying at the airport with the children while the other went to the Garda station. But what if our daughter needed to be there? Or both parents rather than just one? We would all go.
We told the taxi driver we had less than an hour to get into the city, get a new passport and get back to the airport for our flight. No pressure, then.
Pressure was something he didn’t do, as it turned out. Bubbling with joie de vivre, he treated us to a selection of one-liners as we perched on our seats, watching the minutes slip by on the dashboard clock.
When we got to the Garda station the passport man was already there. Even though he should have been at home, digesting his Sunday lunch, he was courteous to a fault. They don’t call it the diplomatic service for nothing.
Fifteen minutes later, thanking him profusely, we climbed back into the taxi. We barely breathed on the way back to the airport, willing every traffic light to stay green.
At 3.15pm we ran like lunatics to the check-in desk – in the nick of time. It was only when we flopped into our seats a few minutes later that it dawned on us how close we had come to holidaying at home.
So dust off those passports well in advance and save your thrills for the theme park, not the airport.
E-mail your experiences to go@irishtimes.com