The travails of travel

So late Tuesday afternoon I slung my pack across my back and made my way down to the train station, hopped on the Stansted Express, and chugged on out of London.

My RyanAir flight from Stansted to Dublin was fine - on-time, fairly smooth, not overly crowded. I got my bags, breezed through Immigration and Customs, and things were good.

At that point I realized I was rather hungry, so I went off looking for food. This was a quest complicated by A) my not having any euros on me, B) it being relatively late, and C) my preference for something not containing meat. After a few tries I finally found a shop that had a lone, sad cheese sandwich (white bread, two slices of processed cheese, two slices of tomato), and took pounds sterling. Not exactly high cuisine, but it kept me from passing out. I found two chairs next to each other in a relatively quiet area of the Departures hall.

It took a while but I managed to doze off - things quieted down around midnight - only to be abruptly woken by a sharp prod in the shoulder. I opened my eyes and there is a police officer standing above me asking for identification, which, while I didn't have anything to worry about, was a bit unsettling.

The next morning I did not, as I'd hoped, get on the 9:00 flight out of Dublin, so I had a few extra hours to kill before my 10:30 flight. First up: security.

I'll make it short. I'm now lacking in one 16-ounce Nalgene bottle, and the appropriate response to have something utterly benign confiscated by security should not include the phrase "molotov cocktail".

Live and learn, eh?