I once surprised someone with a trip to Paris, only to find out her passport had expired the month before. I spent a whole day in the London passport office waiting about and getting talked down to, not an experience I would ever want to repeat to be honest.

I also find the cost of passports quite unbelievable, and the new bio metric thing I have in mine doesn't really speed things up at all, when we flew back from Austria I got side lined as I had a new passport, and Nicola made it through before me with her older one. Bloody stupid.

I would always use a checking service if they offer it there, here in the UK you can pay a couple of extra pounds for someone to check the form and photo over before they send it off for you, seems to really help speed things up.

Cheers

Cris.