I’m heading over to Rome next week to attend a friend’s wedding, but being a small bit disorganised I only got round to organising the trip in the last couple of days.
Rome is the capital of Italy. Dublin is the capital of Ireland. You would think that in 2009 the cost of getting between two capital cities wouldn’t be horrendous and that you’d have a reasonable number of “sane” options open to you.
Unfortunately that isn’t really the case, so I’ve ended up extending my trip to Rome in order to justify it. There’s no point going to one of the most important cities in Europe if you’re not going to get a chance to see anything and Irish wedding aren’t exactly renowned for being “dry” affairs!
So timetable wise …
There are several airlines that handle the route from Dublin to Rome. Unless you want to take a rather circuitous route, that won’t actually save you much money, your options are a bit limited. It’s basically down to Ryanair and Aer Lingus. The other airlines, such as Alitalia, Air France, KLM and Swissair aren’t really viable (I don’t really fancy being stuck in Zurich for four hours!)
So I opted for Aer Lingus.
Flight price, including taxes supposedly saved me 13.50 (not sure where they got that figure from). However it actually cost me a lot more …
The charming little stealth charges kick in…
First off there’s an extra 30 euro to check a bag. So unless you’re only flying with a carry on bag that 13.50 saving is already gone…
Now I don’t know about you, but I would have thought that a plane ticket gave me the right to sit down for the duration of the flight. Seemingly not .. When you go to choose your seat you’re then hit with another charge – 5 euro each way!
So I pay an extra 40 euro for the ability to carry clean clothes and sit down?
Presumably I’ve also been charged extra for credit card fees as well…
And if you don’t pay attention they’ll also charge you for travel insurance that you never asked for as well!
Lovely!
PS: Seemingly you can avoid the seating fee if you don’t choose your seat during booking, but that’s not made clear at all
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