Travel within travel. Northern Ireland awaits

...
We walked to Victoria Station and hunted around and found that the coach station was a couple blocks further. We were all VERY hungry and starting to get pissy. We were looking for a place to eat and settled on getting the boys some steam-table chinese. Kriss and I each got a spring roll (a really BAD spring roll). Then it's wait for the bus.

Waiting in bus stations is an interesting thing. It's just like the airport only generally smaller, dirtier, hotter and devoid entirely of the romance of air travel. Other than that it's fine. We entertained ourselves by watching a couple pigeons come in the door and fly up and perch themselves on a little kiosk store awaithing peoples' dropped crumbs. We threw them pieces of peanuts.
We even had the luck of being able to watch one pigion squirt some liquid out its butt on the floor. Kriss, of course, had to go and clean up the poo. To her credit, she saved some hapless soul from putting his/her bag down onto that spot and soaking the pigiony nectar into their luggage. she was thanked for her valiance by a neighboring waiting bus-rider.
I asked the driver about 20 minutes early if this bus was ours. He said no, that ours came next but said we should get on anyway and take this one a bit early instead of waiting. Good thing!
The road to the airport was almost 2-1/2 hours of traffic. I was starting to worry we wouldn't make it to the airport on time. As it was, we got there just in time and if it weren't for my idiot self forgetting to remove the GPS from my pocket as I entered the metal detector, which triggered an all out pat-down and metal search and the further scrutiny of all of my stuff, we would have had a few minutes to spare. But, since I did do that, we got to the gate just in time to get on the plane and find some seats together. RyanAir doesn't pre-assign seats. Or provide barf bags (no need thankfully).
Ryan air also spends most of their time with you in the air attempting to sell you something. Whatever. A cheeseburger or a soda. Maybe some peanuts or even some liquor. How about something from the catalog? A meal? How about a lottery ticket? All available from the lowly Ryanair hawkers...ahem...flight attendents.
It was a safe and short flight. Arrived in Derry before the stated arrival time. This caused us to be able to hear what a little boy alluded to earlier ("Are we going on Ryanair? Oh, goody, we'll get to hear the MUSIC!): A trumpeting fanfare followed by a self-congratulatory explanation that Ryanair is the most on-time airline in Europe. Over 90%! (gag). Interesting business model is all I'm saying. :)