On the move

 Left Belfast at 8.30 and without incident arrived at Dublin airport approx. 11.35am.

Passed the vehicle back into the hands of the rental company, with not even a blemish, having driven 2999kms - geez if only we had taken another wrong turn we would have clicked over to 3000+.

Our flight out of Dublin is on a different ticket to our flight from Heathrow to Singapore but having done our research I had found that you could ask the checkin desk to do a “manual interline” so that we didn’t have to pick up our bags at Heathrow and then go through customs etc. and then checkin again.

So at the checkin desk I asked, she looked blankly and the went away to ask someone else - long story short she said they couldn’t do it and we would have to go through the rigmarole at Heathrow. Having stood in the checkin line for 45 minutes or so was a tad disappointing to be told no can do as we could have saved that time by doing a self checkin and bag drop in 5 minutes.

We found somewhere for lunch and then had a look in a couple of shops not thinking too much about the time but a glance at the watch just before 2 and then a check of the departure board certainly caught our attention as the board was showing “final call” “gate closing at 2:05”. We were at least 10-15 minutes away from the departure gate so we scurried off and got there after 2:05 but before they closed the gate and boarded with only two people behind us - disaster averted.

A quick flight through to Heathrow - flight time 50 minutes - and on landing wondering how this was going to play out, went to the baggage reclaim, waited around 15 minutes for our bags to be available, walked out through customs (no check of passport, no check of visa, no nothing) took the lift up to the departure level, straight to the Singapore Airlines check in desk which had just opened, checked in, walked through the fast track departure area with a scan of our boarding pass, had our personal baggage X-rayed as you do and through to the airside. It can only be described as efficiency personified.

We now have 3.5 hours to kill before boarding but there are no complaints (yet)!