I don't get out much, do I?
Feb. 9th, 2009 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI just booked my flights & hotel for P-con in Dublin at the end of March.
Which is not particularly remarkable, perhaps, except that it's the first time I've ever booked flights online.
Which in itself is not perhaps remarkable, except as a measure of how long it's been since I flew anywhere. Last time I bought tickets to fly, I bought them in a shop. One did. It might perhaps have been possible to do it through the 'net, but it certainly wasn't common practice.
I came to travelling late, and awkwardly: only left the country once in my twenties and a couple of times in my thirties, not enough to get comfortable with airports and such. I've never been good at the whole holiday thing: I lacked both the money and the confidence to be an independent wanderer, and I didn't often have someone else demanding that we go away. So the trips I have taken have been business-based one way or another (conferences or conventions, mostly, with a few days extra to nose around once I was there), and they've been few and far between.
Just for a little while in my early forties, I was starting to think of myself as a travelling man: went to Taiwan twice and to Korea and to Montreal in swiftish succession, and became quite blasé about it all.
Only then I let it slip again, for lack of money or opportunity; and now I find I'm nervous again. Not of the flying, I like being on planes (that sense of being locked in with no alternative, nothing to do but pass the time, food and books and movies: I love that; which is why in a strange way I liked being ill in hospital too, apart from the pain and so forth), but the process either side of the flight I really do not like at all. Okay, I suppose nobody much does, however well they speak airport; but me, I just go in constant anxiety of doing the wrong thing. (One of these days I'll tell you about me in Tel Aviv airport, and the very small woman with the very big gun; but not perhaps today.)
However. Tickets booked - or rather, flights booked. Ticketless flights. Weird. I stop flying for a few years, and suddenly everything's changed. No wonder I'm nervous, with a new process to learn...
Never mind. Let's speak of something else. Is there any harm in orange-pips, do you suppose? I took it off him, but only because it was so slippery it positively spat itself out of his mouth when he was trying his very best to swallow it. Why a cat (and yes, you know which cat I mean) should want to eat an orange-pip I cannot imagine, but he was quite set on it. Me, I envisioned it getting stuck in his stupid purry gullet, for all its slipperiness, and so I denied it him, but he wasn't happy.
Also: is it actually possible to burn cholera out of a village, do you suppose? I just watched an extremely stupid and irritating film, in which John Wayne did this to the ignorant and ungrateful Japanese, he burned down their entire village for their own good; but as cholera is conveyed in water, I wasn't entirely sure it would prove effective...
Which is not particularly remarkable, perhaps, except that it's the first time I've ever booked flights online.
Which in itself is not perhaps remarkable, except as a measure of how long it's been since I flew anywhere. Last time I bought tickets to fly, I bought them in a shop. One did. It might perhaps have been possible to do it through the 'net, but it certainly wasn't common practice.
I came to travelling late, and awkwardly: only left the country once in my twenties and a couple of times in my thirties, not enough to get comfortable with airports and such. I've never been good at the whole holiday thing: I lacked both the money and the confidence to be an independent wanderer, and I didn't often have someone else demanding that we go away. So the trips I have taken have been business-based one way or another (conferences or conventions, mostly, with a few days extra to nose around once I was there), and they've been few and far between.
Just for a little while in my early forties, I was starting to think of myself as a travelling man: went to Taiwan twice and to Korea and to Montreal in swiftish succession, and became quite blasé about it all.
Only then I let it slip again, for lack of money or opportunity; and now I find I'm nervous again. Not of the flying, I like being on planes (that sense of being locked in with no alternative, nothing to do but pass the time, food and books and movies: I love that; which is why in a strange way I liked being ill in hospital too, apart from the pain and so forth), but the process either side of the flight I really do not like at all. Okay, I suppose nobody much does, however well they speak airport; but me, I just go in constant anxiety of doing the wrong thing. (One of these days I'll tell you about me in Tel Aviv airport, and the very small woman with the very big gun; but not perhaps today.)
However. Tickets booked - or rather, flights booked. Ticketless flights. Weird. I stop flying for a few years, and suddenly everything's changed. No wonder I'm nervous, with a new process to learn...
Never mind. Let's speak of something else. Is there any harm in orange-pips, do you suppose? I took it off him, but only because it was so slippery it positively spat itself out of his mouth when he was trying his very best to swallow it. Why a cat (and yes, you know which cat I mean) should want to eat an orange-pip I cannot imagine, but he was quite set on it. Me, I envisioned it getting stuck in his stupid purry gullet, for all its slipperiness, and so I denied it him, but he wasn't happy.
Also: is it actually possible to burn cholera out of a village, do you suppose? I just watched an extremely stupid and irritating film, in which John Wayne did this to the ignorant and ungrateful Japanese, he burned down their entire village for their own good; but as cholera is conveyed in water, I wasn't entirely sure it would prove effective...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-09 04:55 pm (UTC)Have state-issue photo i.d. and a print-out of your e-ticket confirmation in case there's a problem, and you'll be fine. Carrying the credit card you charged the ticket with is also helpful. otherwise, air travel's really quite simple: show up early, be prepared to be bored, and don't expect any food offered to you to be edible.
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Citrus is bad for cats, isn't it? I suspect the pips would be a bad idea, in any case.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-09 04:59 pm (UTC)See now, that's the sort of thing they do not tell you. Thank you!
Re citrus, I don't know if it's actively bad for them; I do know that they're not supposed to like it. Mac, of course, goes nom-nom-nom.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-09 05:33 pm (UTC)It is handy to have the credit card you charged the ticket on with you, but not necessary. It is, on the other hand, a Really Good Idea to have a printed copy of your e-ticket receipt from the airline (or wherever you booked it) to show if there's any question. I have to say in my many years of traveling I have only once had to show my ticket receipt. The electronic ticketing thing works extremely well.
P-Con sounds delightful. I have heard such good things about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-09 05:53 pm (UTC)Make sure you can get at your clear-bag-of-liquids and laptop easily. Belts with large buckles will need putting through the X-ray machine so you might as well put it in a pocket of your bag along with your lose change etc. while you're queueing. No knives, aerosols, etc.
I think power sockets are the same as the UK.
24 hours before your flight, you may be able to check-in online and choose your seat. Who are you flying with?
If you've got an ATM card then you should be able to withdraw Euros once you arrive at Dublin airport.
I've not been in Dublin for a while but I don't think there's a train connection so check out your bus timetables, etc. on the web before you leave.