Day 3: 28 December (can anyone still not see the pictures? If you can see them, click on them to view a larger image)
We piled onto another bus at 6:15 AM (yay for jet lag), this time headed to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. As we were more awake than the day before (but only slightly because it was still dark outside), we spent a little more time looking out the window. It felt really weird seeing the names of places I'd heard of mostly in songs (e.g. Belfast, Newry, Derry, Carrickfergus) posted on physical signs, and finally knowing the general location of them was really cool. Another thing we noticed was all the roundabouts. That was kind of nice, since it's not much fun getting carsick simply because the bus stops at multiple intersections over a short period of time!
As we weren't sure about what to do when crossing from IE to NI since it's a different country with different currency, we had our passports in our bags, ready to stop at some kind of security checkpoint like when crossing the border between USA and Canada. However, there wasn't any checkpoint. Instead, there was just a white line and a traffic sign that read "you are entering Northern Ireland." The bilingual English/Irish signs changed to English only, and there may have been more references to miles instead of km on the signs. Now the only awkward part was exchanging Euro for sterling, which wasn't too hard- we stopped at a gas/rest station that accepted Euros and gave change in sterling.
Our first stop was Carrick- a- rede, a park where we could cross a rope bridge and walk onto an island formerly used by fisherman to catch salmon from. As it was really windy (Weather channel predicted 20-30 mph wind) we couldn't cross the bridge, but we still got to look at the scenery:
I wonder if a hobbit would want to live here...
Also, I wouldn't suggest bringing a wheelchair here, because the pathways aren't paved. Or if you do have to bring one, bring one with bigger wheels (like the hospital kind) and not one that's got skateboard-size wheels. That means one tired family:
After lunch at a nearby pub, we piled back on the bus and continued onto the Giant's Causeway. And it is true that the rocks (basalt columns from ancient volcanic activity) are hexagonal.
There was a phone booth by the visitor center, so my brother decided to have some fun here. (There's a similar phone booth on campus at uni, so I let him have the fun)
Before heading back to Dublin we stopped by Belfast for about an hour, enough for a short walk around downtown and to look at their City Hall and millennium monument.