Jessica became uncontainable and who could blame her? She was about to realise a dream. I remember that feeling well, New York had been my holy grail too. From a conversation in the pub on a lazy Sunday afternoon I found myself walking out of a travel agents clutching tickets, in the days when that’s how it worked, the feeling was surreal.
Instagram became the bane of my life as Jessica trawled through edited photos matching and planning outfits as though we’d be followed by an entourage and photographers. While Jess concerned herself with aesthetics, I concerned myself with where we were sleeping. Despite her desire to stay in some cute Air BnB with a balcony where she could sip coffee each morning as the sun crept over Brooklyn bridge, Mark preferred us to stay in a hotel that offered a better feeling of security. Many of the Air BnBs are in residential areas often with poor or sparse public transport links. I’m sure it is a perfectly safe situation but a busy hotel made Mark feel better about the two of us so far away on our own.
Unless your pockets are deep, staying on Manhattan island is astronomical by our standards. Even a simple hotel was going to set us back £1000 pp. Trying to keep costs down and still have a nice time takes more meticulous planning but that doesn’t have to mean that you miss out in any way. We (Mark) found a suitable hotel in New Jersey that sat both on the train and bus routes into the city. It was perfect. Job done.
And this is where the smooth sailing ended.
Days before we were due to leave, Mark announced he would be away with work when we left the UK. It left me responsible for the on line check in, something I’d never done before, let alone doing it without an experienced person looking over my shoulder.
A confirmation email arrived telling me when I could check in and so the day before departure I sat down at my laptop, double and triple checking my own name before hitting send. Mine went through without a hitch but the system would then not allow me to check Jess in. ‘oh God, what if we’d not got Jess a ticket! what if i was going on my own?’ A panicked phone call to Aer Lingus confirmed she was definitely on the flight but they could not tell me why I could not check her in. I decided to leave it and go the old fashioned way by doing it at the airport.
It was bitter-sweet waving good bye to my parents at the departures, it made me designated adult in charge, the weight of responsibility felt dropped on my shoulder like the world on Atlas. Checked in with no obvious obstruction and fueled with breakfast we boarded out first leg to Dublin.
What you may not know and I didn’t, is that Dublin is known as ‘little America’ you go through the immigration process here and once through, you are considered to be on American soil. When you arrive at your final destination, it’s just a case of grab your bag and out the doors into the new world.
At the front of the queue we were met by stern-faced officials who separated us without explanation sending Jess alone down a line I was stopped from joining. This sent my heart into overdrive, what did they want with her? Passing through the scanners I kept one eye on my baby and what they were doing. To my horror she was stripped searched (as far as was decent), her carry on bag emptied and everything drug wiped!! What was going on? I waited, helpless as she was sent through the scanners twice more and patted down again. Did they know something about my innocent looking Jess that I didn’t? After what felt like a life time they let her go.
“The lady is training, it was a routine thing,” said Jess with a casual tone. I wasn’t convinced though and my heart couldn’t settle. When we came to board the flight her boarding pass set off a warning alarm complete with flashing red light and I heard the attended say, ‘ B14, don’t forget that.’ What was happening? Why us?
We settled into our long flight, putting it all behind us. Jess did not share my worries and had already brushed it off as nothing. We’d been sat next to a very pleasant New York resident who helped us rejig our itinerary so we weren’t zig zagging the city and we enjoyed an uneventful flight. At baggage claim our helpful guide grabbed her bag and bid us a fun time leaving us to wait for ours. We waited and we waited and we waited. When everyone from our flight had gone, the panic came back, where were our bags? The next flight was coming!
Leaving Jess at the carousel just in case they should make an appearance I hunted out the Aer Lingus desk. I’m sorry to report that the American people (in the airport especially) were less than helpful and rude to boot. We are so helpful and obliging here that we expect the same across the world and in many places it is sadly lacking. No one wanted to help me. I tried to ask at several other airline desks and was met with the same reply, often spoken like this:
‘Mam, I. don’t. work. for. Aer Lingus.’
‘Yes I know that but could you just…..’
‘ Mam. you’re not listening to me, I. don’t. work. for. Aer. Lingus.’
‘But you work in the airport, so can you tell me where to go….’
‘mam…… ‘
And so it went on until I was in tears,on the other side of the world, with my youngest child (yes, I know she’s twenty-one, but still), no bags and no other adult. After two hours, a phone call to Mark, one to my dad, one to Aer Lingus and a sternly worded email, we decided to go to the hotel and return in the morning. At that point we discovered the international data package we’d bought did not work and we only had wifi in the airport. We found ourselves booking a cab in the arrivals lounge then running out into the rain and bedlam of hundreds of people getting into cabs to try to find it. We missed two with this system and were wet through to add insult to injury. On the third attempt, we heard our names spoken over a tanoy and abandoned another taxi. They must have found our cases! Euphoric, we ran back inside and listened, again our names were spoken with instructions where to go.
A somber faced man met us as we came bolting up a flight of stairs and marched us to a tiny corridor through a nondescript grey door that looked little more than a door to a plant room. I instantly spotted our cases, he attempted to reprimand us, insisting our bags had been going around the conveyor for two hours unattended. We were tired but not that tired that we wouldn’t spot large black and grey bags going around alone while we stood and stared at them. Something was a miss and I believe our bags were pulled because of the trouble we’d had with Jess at security. He even threatened that they were going to send our bags back to Dublin but would give me no explanation as to why. He made other outlandish claims of the trouble he had gone to to find us, making him late going home. I just wasn’t convinced by his story and I’m afraid Aer Lingus has lost my trade going forwards. We were not the only ones looking for our bags either. Three other passengers from other flights were also looking for their. All were Aer Lingus flights.
Relieved and too tired to argue with the rude man, we took them and finally got in a cab. All I wanted was a bed.
We arrived at the hotel, smiling and laughing about the whole indecent and went to check in.
‘Hello, my booking is under De Vivo’
‘You can’t stay here mam.’
‘Yes, we’re checked in here.’
‘No, mam we’ve had a power cut on the upper floors and all the guests have been redirected to other places to stay. Let me just check something. Ah I see, you didn’t book direct so your booking company had responsibility to move you not us.’
Dear god, I was in actual hell. A quick phone call to the company we had used, confirmed that yes we had been informed of the need to find another accommodation while we were in the air and because I hadn’t replied they just cancelled us. So now we were stood in a hotel we couldn’t stay in, it was raining, it was late, we had no where to go and we had not slept for twenty hours. What the hell were we going to do? The two lads on reception began calling hotels for us but had no joy and I called Mark. Sat in an empty lounge with Mark on the phone from Holland where it was 3am we tried to sort it. After two hours Mark found one. It was more money but not far from where we were. We took it.
Twenty minutes later we crawled into another hotel reception.
‘Could I take a swipe of the card you booked this on please?’
‘No, it’s not here.’ Silence. Dear God please, no, no, no.
‘O.k. no worries any card will do.’ Thank God.
Twenty five hours after getting out of bed in Nottingham I slumped into bed. If this had been a test of resilience and my capabilities of global travel it had worked. My concern had changed from the moment we couldn’t find our bags it was no longer about if I was capable of being master of my travel anxiety, it was that after almost fifteen years of waiting, Jessica’s dream was dropping to pieces. I didn’t fix it all alone, this is true. but I had dealt with my own feeling of inadequacy. Anyway, all’s well that ends well so they say.
Welcome to New York.
Elsewhere Stories 