Giants Causeway and beyond

Dunluce Castle
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March 15th 2007

Day 2 - Derry to Belfast

up bright and early after a rather late night, for the 8am depature of the bus...

off to visit the antrim coast along the top of ireland...

Giants Causeway
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definitely an extremely scenic drive, despite the rain. First stop of the morning was at Dunluce castle (yay another castle!).

It was raining and windy a nd so cold and miserable This castle also happened to be falling apart and offered no shelter from the rain and wind!

However it was sitting right along side some magnificant cliffs, surrounded by the lush green rolling hills and with the crystal blue colour of the ocean behind it, like it should belong in a fairytale!

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The main attraction for the day was one of the only things I knew about Ireland and the thing i most wanted to see.

The Giant's Causeway ....

Sat through a mini presentation to tell us about the legends and folktales behind it all. I'm embarrassed to say that as soon as the lights went out, so did i... and woke to find the credits rolling!! oops

Headed off down the hill to the actual giants causeway, and as we wound our way down, all you could here were gasps as people caught their first sight of the rocks.

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i have to say that this place looks too un-natural to be natural.

It's totally amazing, and the pictures really don't do it justice. i did think there'd be a bit more to it, but we were there at high tide and many of the thousands of rocks we under water... climbed right up to the top of the stones and was almost blown over!

after being blown away we headed back up the hill to the tourist centre and had a picnic lunch at the top... when the sun decided to grace us with it's presence!

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Next stop was the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge - It was a rope bridge suspended a good way up over nothing but churning water and rocks (think Indiana Jones and the temple of Doom scene) all we need now is some crazy dude chasing us - oh wait - we DID have that *coff* Keith *coff* lol

now the bridge looks studry enough (read playing card tower in the wind) and im pretty sure all of us went over it - the first couple of steps were fine, then you come out of the wind break... enough said ( i almost lost my camera!). The view was awesome, and many things were blown away in the wind... thankfully no one on tour... though i can think of one that we all would have been happy to lose (ummm keith!)

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Arrived in Belfast, and quickly let our minds travel to the pub, but before we got there, we all decided to head out on our own version of a walking tour... after being allocated one key in every 3 people... we set out with our map stolen from one of the desks in the hostel... (only sharing with 6 people this time, and were the lucky group to get keith...)

had dinner at the crown (supposed to be the famous pub i northern ireland...)

and were treated to some really hospitable service... out waitress cracked a smile once.. when we were leaving.. had a problem with us seating ourselves, and being a large group of 12... (i might add that there was 2 others i the place, and all the seats were empty!)

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food was good though

ended up heading downstairs to the actual bar as soon as possible, and meeting up with the others who had decided to forego food and just drink!..

the one thing that was really obvious about northern ireland, was the fact that smoking in bars is still happening (though as i write this i think the bans have come into place and smoking is banned all over) it was horrible.... had more to do with the lack of air flow through the place and the low ceilings,

by the end of the night we could hardley see anything... and our eyes were all watering from the smoke...

ended up calling it an early night and heading back to the hostel at 12am... where we continued to talk to well in to the early hours of the morning...