My friend Fionnuala was only being practical when she told me I was the last person on earth she would choose to go on holiday with. I'm the friend who forgets/loses/accidentally destroys tickets/money/passport when venturing anywhere outside my own front door. That's why I spent 24 hours in a very draughty Split airport a few months ago. For five years in a row I lost my return train ticket from the Scoil na nOg Gaeltacht in Cork. You get the picture.
Nothing went missing on a recent trip to the US but I have given my friend a few other reasons to add to her list of reasons not to go on holidays with me. Day 1: My husband wisely takes charge of the travel documents so we manage to get on the Aer Lingus plane at Dublin Airport, where we remain for the next four-and-a-half hours. Perhaps aware of my travel jinx status, SIPTU has chosen that day to immobilise the airport. American passengers say it would never happen in the US and mumble darkly about blasting the offending strikers with water cannons. Sounds logical at the time. We are put up in the swish Portmarnock Golflinks Hotel by Aer Lingus. I impress some American strandees with the knowledge that this is the same hotel Mary McAleese stayed in the night before her inauguration. A couple of pints later I also tell them that although myself and my husband were married three years ago we are "sort of on our honeymoon". As a result, every time we walk through the hotel lobby people shout, "Oh look, it's the honeymoon couple." My privacy-shielding husband is mortified and keeps calling me bigmouth. Not the best start to our, ahem, honeymoon.
The Scratcher
Day 2: Good news. Most airlines, even (boo, hiss) Ryanair, are now flying out of Dublin. Bad news. Aer Lingus is not.
Day 3: We finally arrive at JFK International Airport with a loosely made arrangement to meet a distant acquaintance of my brother in an East Village pub called The Scratcher. Distant acquaintance Jennifer is letting us have her apartment for a few days. Jennifer, if our polite but sporadic e-mails are anything to go by, is a lovely girl. Jennifer is nowhere to be seen.
After a while we pour our hearts out to the barwoman, as in all the corniest American movies. Her name is Natalie and she is from Dublin. "Did you say Jennifer?" she asks. "Because a girl came in earlier and left an envelope with `Jennifer's keys' written on it". Oh, happy day. Natalie is so delighted for her two hapless compatriots that she gives us our beers on the house. We will be back to buy her a drink we insist, just as soon as we have settled into Jennifer's place. The beat-up apartment building is just a few doors away. The fact that we can't open the main door would normally send out warning signals. But we are in the throes of a kind of jet-lag induced delirium so we buzz a few other inhabitants and gain entrance. But the key won't turn in Jennifer's apartment door.
Looking for keys
Outside on the street, we stand with our big, red rucksack and duty-free bags looking completely lost. Then, like homing pigeons, we walk towards The Scratcher. Natalie is running towards us. At least someone is glad to see us. "Where are the keys?" she says frantically. We tell her they didn't fit, but she seems to know this already. It seems an Australian guy has come into the bar looking for the keys his friend had left there. His friend's name is Jennifer. Off he had gone into the New York night looking for his Jennifer's apartment while we had been practically breaking into to our Jennifer's pad. Have another beer, says Natalie. So we do. Scottish Mark, who has come to take over Natalie's shift, hands us a portable phone and we began ringing every New York Hotel that has the word "budget" in the blurb. (Point of information: there are not very many and most of them appear to be referring to Mohammed Al Fayed's budget.) The Gershwin Hotel is a dubious-sounding combination of half hotel/half hostel. But it has a room for $75, so off we go in a yellow cab.
The Gershwin is lovely - probably much nicer, if a tad more expensive, than Jennifer's place, we decide. We venture out for some dinner and manage to walk only as far as McDonald's before I get a panic attack and feel that any minute now we are going to be mugged. We eat a truly horrible burger (unforgiveable, I feel - we are in the birthplace of burgers, after all) and head back to the hotel. At 5 a.m. we are wakened by noises that sound like someone's footsteps beside the bed. Slightly scary; but what else can you expect for $75?
Day 4: New York is amazing. We spend the day riding the subway, visiting Ellis Island, admiring the Statue of Liberty, feeling as if we are starring in our own B-movie. The Return of the Tourists, or something like that.
Taking photographs
Anyway, as luck will have it the lift - or elevator in American-speak - opens just as we step into the foyer of the Gershwin. Time for a nice relaxing shower, a change of clothes, and a beer in the hotel bar. Two couples get into the lift beside us and then a nice Spanish girl. The lift starts up a bit too slowly for my liking, then stops altogether. We are stuck between the seventh and eighth floors.
An hour-and-a-half later we are still there. We take photographs of each other and set up a campaign to free the Elevator Seven. The female part of a Netherlands couple divulges that she was "really, really needing the toilet" even before she got into our prison. When the New York Fire Department arrives to rescue us we feel like Keanu Reeves in Speed. "You guys have a good time in there?" they ask. We wonder what killing a fireman would get you in the state of New York. I'm happy to report that the rest of the holiday passed without incident. Almost. Within 48 hours of our arrival in Winston Salem, North Carolina, to visit my brother, a nearby town and two of his company's manufacturing plants were flattened by a tornado.