Northern Adventure

Jen and I decided to take one last trip during our break in exams. I had taken four and had one left, she had taken 9 and have 2 left. We figured we deserved a break, and had been planning on going to the north since about March, so went.

We left Dublin at 7 am on a bus to Belfast in order to catch a train up to the northern coast to see the Giant’s Causeway and Bushmills Distillery. The trip was rather uneventful, though long (as most traveling in Ireland is) and we got to Portrush just before 12. At the visitor’s center we found a map of a trail to the Giant’s Causeway, the buses weren’t running as it was Sunday, and it was gorgeous sunny weather, so we decided to just walk there. Here begins our adventure :) We got fish and chips for lunch and had a picnic on the beach and then headed down the coast. We spent a good bit of time looking at the limestone rocks along the beach and trying to get to a particular one that was an arch over the water. When we decided to head on our first attempt to climb up to the road was foiled by nettles lining the path so we decided that wasn’t the place to go up and went back to the car park to go up the safe way.

At the road we saw a sign that said Bushmills - 4. Thinking it was in kilometers we thought that was grand and started walking. An hour and a half later when we got to Bushmills we realized that Northern Ireland definitely measures distance in miles. Oops. Because of that we ended up getting to the distillery just after the last tour had left so we just went to their restaurant and had whiskey cheesecake (didn’t taste like cheesecake but was really good) and a whiskey each. Jen decided she wasn’t a fan of whiskey straight though, so we bought ice cream so she could pour the whiskey over it :)

We then headed to the Giant’s Causeway, another 3 miles along the road. Our feet were rather sore at this point. The causeway was really cool, I took lots of pictures and we played on the rocks. The Giant’s Causeway is a basalt formation where an ancient lava field cooled and separated into polygonal columns, leaving a field of these polygons out into the ocean. There’s a legend about it that I couldn’t remember except that it involves an Irish hero, a giant, and getting to Scotland, but don’t remember why or who was doing the going.

After the Giant’s Causeway we decided to take a taxi back to our hostel, which was in Portstewart, on the other side of Portrush and we were definitely not walking back. The hostel was nice and right on the beach. We walked to a store and bought cheap meat pies and a bottle of wine for dinner and then back to the hostel to cook. It stays light in Ireland until about 10, which is very cool and makes for great traveling ;) Dinner was finished just at sunset so we sat outside and I took lots of sunset pictures - there was a gorgeous sunset over the ocean! While we ate we laughed at the strange custom of Portstewart - cruising. All of the teenagers get out and drive up and down the main street for hours. The would turn around near our hostel and then head back in the other direction. Now, as nearly the whole town was doing this there was bumper to bumper traffic for most of the way. It was kind of a rather ridiculous thing to do, but amusing to laugh at.

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast and then walked back to Portrush to catch either a train or bus. We made it in time for a bus, but realized when it came that we didn’t actually have enough money for it so went to get the train, realized we didn’t have enough money for that either, so ran to an atm before the train got there and wondered how we spent all our money (hostel, taxi and train apparently). We made it back in time and headed back to Belfast. One of the trains was delayed so we ended up getting to Belfast about 12:30 and so got a cheap lunch and ate it at the city hall, which had a nice lawn and lots of people sitting around. Our first plan was to walk to the Belfast Castle, but then went into Primark and decided shopping was cool too. We got new swimsuits and then headed out to go find the murals.

First we went to West Belfast to see the political murals. There was a long line of murals for all of the oppressed cultures and/or times, like the Basque region and one about Frederick Douglass. We saw quite a few smaller murals in that area and then headed back to the city center. We stopped in a pub that we found from the “historic pubs” tour leaflet and mapped out the rest of our day, which involved more murals, a park, Queen’s university and a bus home. We headed out towards East Belfast to see the Titanic mural (the Titanic was built in Belfast, I hadn’t known that) and two C.S. Lewis murals, as well as loyalist murals. It was cool. We bought cheap food and Bacardi breezers on sale and headed to the park for our last picnic (the weather was so nice the whole trip we couldn’t help but picnic :) ). After dinner we walked to the Botanical Gardens, but unfortunately they were closed so we just walked around them and to Queen’s University. They have really cool buildings there - pretty red color and castle-ish. We sat in their grass for a bit and talked before heading back to the bus station.


Our original plan had been to just stay out and go to pubs until we were ready to go home and then get on a bus back to Dublin (buses between the city run every hour all day), but as we were now out of money we decided to just head back. We slept on the bus and got back to Dublin at 12:30 and walked home. We ended up walking between 25 and 30 miles over the two days and finally got to see Northern Ireland. All in all, a good last trip :)