Winter Break- an amazing and not so amazing start
Trip Start
Jan 09, 2011
1
16
20
Trip End
Jun 13, 2011
Beauvais, Picardie, France
Friday, February 25, 2011
At the airport we made it through, expecting the worst from our Ryanair flight, which turned out to be not so bad. It was so thrilling to be in the presence of so many IRISH people! Walking up to our plane, I returned someone's passport who had dropped it walking from the tarmac up the stairs!
After several hours of travel and waiting, we made it to DUBLIN! We discovered we had to take a taxi to our hostel because the bus that was supposed to take us there wasn't running due to the fact that it was midnight. In the taxi, I took out a little beaded bag containing my passport and a field notes notebook that I had written all of our trip information in--including the name and address of our hostel to tell the address to the taxi driver. I realized that I didn't have enough money in my wallet to cover my portion of the cost of the taxi so, I took out my stash of money for the entire trip and became paranoid that I was going to lose all of my money in the taxi. But as it turned out, instead I left my beaded bag with my passport in it, in the taxi! The second I stepped out of the taxi, I knew it was left, but it was too late, the taxi had already driven away!
We went to the hostel, and for the next 2 days among trying to enjoy the beautiful city of Dublin, I also continued the search for my lost passport. I was hoping that because just a few days earlier I had returned someone's lost passport that I too would get my passport back! Sunday, I found out that my passport had officially been stolen.
Sunday, we came down from our hostel in the morning and started to walk out the door when Ray (one of the amazing members of the Four Courts Hostel staff that helped me try to locate my passport) stopped me and said, "Kathryn, your bag, did you get it back?". I of course said, "no, haven't been able to locate it yet unfortunately." To which he replied, "no, someone returned your bag and your notebook--no passport to the hostel!" Apparently, it was found about 4 blocks from the hostel on the window ledge of an apartment building and someone returned it to the hostel because my field notes notebook contained all the information! My theory is just that whoever got into the taxi after us saw the bag and rather than turning it into the driver, looked inside, saw it was an american passport, then after getting out of the taxi threw the bag on the street taking the passport with them.
All in all a stressful experience, but it all worked out in the end, I got a new temporary passport and was able to enjoy the rest of my time in Dublin and then Scotland!
