A Month in Dublin: Northern Ireland

After spending a night in Belfast that included Meg being teased by her much wanted Chili's salad (the ranch dressing just wasn't the same), we went on a coach tour of the Antrim coast on the way to the Giant's Causeway. After a short time on the bus, that was surprisingly packed, we realized that this wasn't a bad way to travel. Meg didn't have to drive on the crazy roads, we knew we wouldn't get lost, and we had someone to tell us a bunch of interesting facts along the way, i.e. driving past the house where Andrew Jackson's parents lived before moving to America.

The drive up was incredibly beautiful, the Northern Irish coast definitely rivals that of southwest Ireland. After stopping for a couple of photo ops at some castles, we stopped at Bushmills, the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to take the tour and earn a second Irish whiskey tasting certificate. We moved on to the Giant's Causeway from here and after a lunch that took way too long (due to being served by 12 yr. olds), we took the walk down. The Giant's Causeway is very impressive, even more so when you know there's nothing like it in the rest of the world. They just make such impressive steps it's hard to believe they're natural. As you'll see in the pics, it was a little windy.

Our last stop on the way home was a little rope bridge built 300 years ago for salmon fisherman. While the rope bridge was pretty cool and much more sturdy than we thought it would be, the views were what were exceptional. Some of the prettiest water we had ever seen with many little caves coupled with some impressive cliffs; not to mention being able to see Scotland from our viewpoint. As I told Meg at the time, being from America, when you hear the main spot of attraction being advertised as the rope bridge you don't expect anything else. We would put up a rope bridge over a drainage ditch because it's "scary" and not expect the beautiful scenery around to be the actual draw for being there.

We were on our way home after this. Another hour on the bus to Belfast and another 2 1/2 hours worth of bus rides back to Dublin...we'd had our fill of the buses for the day. This was essentially our last journey in Ireland. In two days, we'll be leaving completely so we have plans to make it out to Temple Bar one more time tonight before we head off. We'll try and get a post up before we get to Iceland though.