Northern Ireland

The last 24 hours I have traveled as much of Ireland as I could possibly pack into that amount of time. The day started off by leaving Galway at 1:45am and head to Dublin. I tried to be smart and sleep on the bus so that I was well rested for the remainder of the day, but I slept a little too hard and missed my stop. I finally woke up when the bus driver turned on the lights and said last stop. When I woke up I was at the Dublin airport. So here I am an American girl, lost in the Dublin airport at 4:45am, nothing is open, and no one is around to talk to, so I caught a cab back into Dublin City. (that was one expensive nap). After arriving in Dublin I had an hour before catching my next bus from Dublin to Belfast at 6:00am. Once in Belfast I transfered onto the Paddywagon tour bus which was a guided tour that took me through the Northern U.K.


The first stop on the tour of the Northern U.K was the Carrick-A-Rede Bridge. Carrick-A-Rede means the rock in the road. The road is the sea route for Atlantic salmon on their westward journey past Carrick Island. For over 350 years, fishermen have strung a rope bridge 30m above the sea to allow them to access the best places to catch the migrating salmon.





After facing my fear with heights, I aboarded the the bus and we headed to the Giants Causeway. The legend has it that an Irish Giant, Finn MacChool, built the Causeway to reach Scotland to fight the Scottish giant, Benandonner. As Finn crossed the Irish Sea, he saw that his Schottish adversary was much bigger than him so he fled back to Ireland. Benandonner gave chase. Finn's wife, Oonagh, saw Benandonner approaching in the distance. She hid Finn by dressing him as a baby and putting him to bed. When Benandonner arrived, Oonagh told him that Finn was hunting adn invited him to wait. When she showed Benandonner the 'baby', the Scottish giant got quite a shockL if the baby was that big, waht size must his father be! Benandonner took fright and fled back to Schotland, ripping up the Causeway as he went so Finn could not follow. Two ends of the Giant's Causeway remain today: one here on the North Coast and the other at Fingal's cave on the Scottish island of Staffa.

This is what's left of the causeway.




This is the mountain I am sitting on top of in the below photo. If you look closely you can see people standing on the edge (they look like ants)



The Giant's Chair

The Organ
Following the Giants Causeway the tour bus took us through 1 hour 1/2 of beautiful countryside as we travelled to our next destination, the city of Derry. In Derry I was able to get off of the bus, visit the murals of Derry and the site of Bloody Sunday.