Aer Lingus offered a refund (for any flights that actually get cancelled) and offered to change tickets to an earlier or later flight. The problem is, our hotel in Paris was pre-paid and I'd really like to be there this week and not next. So I had a problem to solve.
This morning I got up to frantically look for solutions. I found all of the other airlines that fly out of Dublin and started searching for alternatives. There are about 22 of them. I now know that not all of them fly to Paris and flights within Europe are quite affordable unless you're looking to leave the next day when everyone knows your options are limited, at which point they become 3-4 times the price you paid a month ago. Ack, a refund would do me no good!
At this point I'm breaking a sweat and looking for ferries. There are several ferry operators, and they don't charge that much more than our original flight. Seems like they take about 12 hours through the night and don't have any cabins, only deck seats. That should be fine with kids, right? The kids bouncing on the bed while watching Irish cartoons behind me made that seem like a bad idea.
OK, we'll be ok. There's the Chunnel. We just need to find some way to get to London, and then we can take the train. Haven't people swum across the Irish Sea before?? How hard can this be? We have a really large suitcase that I'm pretty sure will float, and I've built up my arms from carrying Daniel all around Dublin. We just need some oars and life jackets, and we should be able to pull this off.
During this time, Jess called Aer Lingus. They said the talks are continuing, no flights have been cancelled, you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. I took a shower and then refreshed the news to find an agreement was made. No strike after all. Good thing I spent all that time solving a problem we didn't have - otherwise, that might have ruined our day. Better to be lucky than good.
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