Abort, Abort! (also I'm BAAAAAAAAACK)

Unfortunately I've re-he-he-heeaaallly gotten backed up on updating this sucker, and here I am, one month behind in cataloging my adventures. So, I'll back this up a little bit to talk about my last big trip-- Northern Ireland.

We left for Belfast early on a Thursday morning, and arrived in Northern Ireland before we knew it. Even though Northern Ireland is a different country from the Republic of Ireland, you'd never know it from the drive. There isn't a border, or signs, a union jack flag, a picture of Big Ben on a gaudy sign that tourists could take pictures in front of... nothing. When we got there our first stop was the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge in North Antrim, Northern Ireland. Our trusty bus driver, Bart(!), led us right up to the area where the path to the rope bridge began. After hiking the short path which gave us some gorgeous cliffside views, we arrived at the bridge. It's a narrow rope bridge, with wooden planks to step on, and it hangs some 80 ft. above the water below. Fishermen used to use the bridge to go out to the tiny island the bridge reaches to in order to catch salmon. Although I think some people were a little nervous about crossing, I'm pretty sure everyone made the journey across (and back) from the bridge, and some people even jumped up and down on their jaunt across the bridge, causing the entire bridge (and everyone else on it) to bob up and down. We definitely got some amazing views of the coast there, and it was an awesome introduction to the beauty of Northern Ireland.

Our next stop was probably the second most famous natural wonder of Ireland (and N. Ireland), behind the Cliffs of Moher, we went to The Giant's Causeway. Giant's Causeway is a large area along the coastline, and it's famous for the hexagonal rocks completely covering the area. Although the rocks were naturally formed into hexagons when an underground volcano erupted and the lava cooled, there are more supernatural explanations for their existence as well. The legend says that an Irish giant, Finn McCool, built the causeway to Scotland to challenge his rival, Benandonner. When Finn saw how big Benandonner was, he returned back the Ireland. Benandonner crossed the causeway to Ireland looking for Finn, and Finn had his wife dress him up in a blanket, pretending to be a child. When Benandonner saw the size of "Finn's child" (aka Finn), he ran back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway as he went so that Finn couldn't follow him. Anyway, the causeway was so cool to see, and walking down past the coastline cliffs, I've never felt so small. I'll post pictures on facebook when my computer comes back from the dead!

Our first night in Northern Ireland was spent in Derry (called Londonderry by Protestants). We arrived when it was already dark out, so our first fresh sight of the city was the following lovely (read: TORENTIALLY DOWNPOURING) morning for our Free Derry Tour. Our tour guide was an extremely knowledgeable man named Eugene, who had the distinctive feature of sounding uncannily like Shrek when he spoke. Now going on the Free Derry tour was like nothing I have ever done before. It literally put us right in the heart of religious tensions in Northern Ireland. We walked along the street where Bloody Sunday occurred-- when on January 30, 1972 British Paratroopers killed 14 innocent and unarmed Catholics (ranging in age from 17-mid 50's maybe?) were during a march protesting their lack of civil rights. It was strange to see the Bogside, where all the Catholics lived, just outside the walls of Derry. And it's crazy that all of this tension still exists, albeit to a lesser degree. The west side of Derry, to this day, is still about 97% Catholic nationalist, and the 3% of the people that live there that are Protestants have high fences built, segregating themselves from the Catholics. Definitely a very strange thing to be in a place so full of (and unapologetic about) religious divisions.

After our afternoon in Derry we made the bus trip about 2 hours away to Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. We had the pleasure of staying in a hotel just next door to the Europa Hotel, the most bombed hotel in Europe! Charming. Belfast reminded me a lot of London-- they have a Big Ben-esque clock tower (though it's much smaller) and a big ferris wheel. We didn't do that much touring around Belfast aside from an hour-long bus tour the following morning, but from what I did see Belfast has a delicious Subway (when we arrived in Belfast suddenly all I wanted in the world was Subway... therefore I had it twice in as many days), a really cool government building next to the ferris wheel, and a Tesco that rivals the taj mahal. There are also some cool political murals, which, I'd love to post pictures of but unfurtunately cannot on account of hard drive crashing.

I know this post is lame/overdue/doesn't do justice to all of the awesome things we saw on our trip to Northern Ireland, but I promise to try to update ASAP with what I've been up to since then (my family's visit, and various wanderings around Dublin)!

Cheers!