Of Giant Proportions

Saturday we got a tour to go see some of the sights in Northern Ireland. We went by some castles first and then along the coastline. I must say that the Irish coastline is very pretty, so that was very nice. We went to this 300-year-old rope bridge that linked this little island to the mainland. From the images, I thought it would be a very long bridge and scary to cross (you’re like 70 feet in the air above the water), but it was pretty short (maybe 15 feet across?). It was still fun, but nowhere near as scary as I thought it would be. The funny part was that it was drizzling when we were walking towards it, as we crossed it was sunny, and as soon as we were on the little island, it started pouring. Not vertical pouring though, but this awful horizontal wall of rain that soaked all of our backsides, which wasn’t good because we were wearing jeans. So then when we left, it was sunny again as we crossed, but then it rained as we walked back to the bus.

            After that, we went and had lunch at a whiskey distillery. Unfortunately, we barely had time to run in and eat so we didn’t really see any of the distillery. The cool thing is that I now have a Northern Irish pound that features that distillery so that’s nice. The food was ok, but it’s hard to enjoy things when you’re in a rush. However, rushing through all of that gave us 2 hours at the Giant’s Causeway. Remember when I went to the Leprachaun Museum and told you about Finn McCool (the Irish giant – I remember his name now) and the Scottish Giant? Well this is the bridge that they ‘built.’ As we were walking over to the main area, we got sidetracked for a bit at this nice cove with these really awesome igneous rocks. We got to climb all over them, so that was really fun. Then, we finally made it over to one of the coves with the rocks. Now, technically these stones are formed from the mantle activity or something like that, but it’s really quite breathtaking and mindboggling that there are all of these perfectly shaped hexagonal stones nested together that just recede into the ocean. Of course, this is why it looks like someone built it, especially the fact that on a clear day you can see Scotland and it’s the same on the coastline over there. Apparently we would have had to go even farther to another inlet to see Scotland and we were seeing some other island or something, so we thought we saw Scotland but turns out not. However, this means that the weather had cleared and was in fact absolutely perfect, which was such a blessing! It wasn’t hot, there were hardly any clouds in the sky and no mist so the visibility was great! The stones almost make stairs, or look like something from a computer program where there’s a wave through the pixels and they’re all at different levels. So we climbed all over those and enjoyed the beautiful weather. It was just incredible and definitely one of my favorite days. After that, we headed back to Belfast, had a quick dinner (unfortunately at a kind of sketch Chinese place but it was cheap) and then got ready to go out. Kelsey was turning 21 that night and we wanted to party and celebrate her birthday. We’d met some guys in our hostel who were going out that night as well, so we met up with them so we wouldn’t have to worry about safety when we wanted to get back and all. We had a great time and she had a great start to for her birthday.

Castle Ruins

Elizabeth and I in front of the Ruins

coastline leading to the bridge

rope bridge

we were relatively high up

come of the caves around the rope bridge

more view of the coastline (it was raining)

Maddie and I before crossing the bridge a second time

coastline near the Giant's Causeway

Maddie on the igneous rocks we played around with first

waves!

Giant's causeway

Me, Elizabeth, Maddie and Kelsey

aren't these rocks awesome!?!

view of the perfect day here

Maddie and I on the causeway

Queen's University in Belfast

Better picture of the statue

Sunday we headed back early as we had long papers to work on. We went to dinner for Kelsey’s birthday and watched a bit of the Olympics, but it wasn’t a very eventful day. Mostly paper writing (bleh).