5, 4, 3, 2, 1….

And OMG indeed.
We fly out Tuesday morning.

To add to the jolly mix of tasks below, there is a new one.
Just when I thought I had at least gotten all the travel plans solid…

We booked our trip to London via Dublin, to visit Tom's relatives.
(The ones who are relatively nearby in case Sair has some kind of awful emergency whose nature I cannot even comprehend.)
And they are lovely people.
Then we take the ferry across to Wales (cos I love ferries), a full day in Wales (cos it's Wales), then the train to London, hotel in Bloomsbury, near Sair's college, and five days to hang out before dropping her off.
Sounds great.

Anyway, yesterday I was Googling around with other questions, and

ACK

it appears I have messed up Sair's student visa.

It's a UK visa, so the customs people at the Dublin airport don't entry stamp it, because they are the Republic of Ireland and not the UK.
They went to some difficulty to achieve this, and aren't going to undo it now.
But even so, apparently  British Isles, all of them, Skye and the lot, are inside of some kind of free travel group, so going from the Republic of Ireland to the UK doesn't provide an entry stamp either.
So they are separate, but not all that separate.
Who knew?

I've been madly phoning and emailing people on the question.
It may be that we can find some guy in an office in London who can see that she is there and stamp it.
Or if nothing else works, I suspect she could grab a cheap flight to Paris, turn around and come back and be entry stamped over the weekend.
 But it may also all be moot.

We applied for her Irish citizenship back in January, and we told to expect it to take at least 18 months, or more.
Fine.
It came last week.
We can now apply for an Irish passport, and are told that one will take 4-8 weeks.
Apparently when one has a dual citizenship like this, what happens is that the US passport is for  entering and exiting the US proper, but for traveling within, and staying endlessly, legally, in the EU the Irish passport is used.
So I think she can just stay happily in London this fall (though I mail her the Irish passport when it arrives here, as insurance).
She can come home for Christmas on her US passport, leave in January on the US passport, but use the Irish one on arriving in London again, to enter the UK.
And it won't matter whether The US one was entry-stamped in August or not, because she can be in London on her Irish passport perfectly legally.

I think.
 

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