Eruope 2012- Day 61: Ireland- The Gaints Causways

It all started back on July 13th. I was in my bathroom and I turned to the next day of my 1,000 places to see before you die calendar, and there I saw a picture of The Giant's Causeways. We already knew at that time that Nate would be traveling over to Europe for 3-6 months, so I went out to the living room and told him " I've found a place we need to visit in Eruope"

The last couple times we have been to Europe we have planned one or two more expensive weekends where we will go somewhere that requires us to stay in a motel. The first time it was London and Paris, the last time we drove down to southern Germany, and we had already planned on Rome for this trip, but I now hoped to squeeze in Ireland as well.

Because Nate has some other coworkers coming over to learn the same thing that he's doing, he was able to take off Monday to give us a long weekend.

We were flying on Ryanair which has really cheap tickets, but also loads of restrictions. You are only allowed one carry-on bag per person, and it can be no larger than around 21"x15"x10" and it can't weigh more than around 22 lbs. My small suitcase is too big for that so we packed all of our clothes in Nate's small bag and I took my camera bag as my carry-on. 

You have to make sure you check-in and print your boarding pass before going to the airport, or they charge you 50 euros per person to reprint them. They weigh your bag to make sure it's not over weight, and they check the size as well. If your bag doesn't qualify with their restrictions you have to pay an additional 50 euros per bag to check them.  Your not allowed any personal items so even your purse must fit in your bag. There are no assigned seats, but for an additional charge you can pay for priority boarding if you would like to get on the plane first. There is no free drinks or snacks, and there are advertisements plastered everywhere inside the plane. The seats don't recline and there is very little leg room and they constantly are making announcements for things you can buy while on-board.

Nate and I got to the airport 2 hours ahead of our flight, and I was surprised that our tickets and passports where checked 6 times before we got on the plane. I even had to show my boarding pass to be able to buy a bottle of water while waiting for our flight.

The flight however went fine and we landed 15 minutes early in Dublin. Because lunch time was approaching and we knew we had a 3 hour drive north to the Giant's Causeways we ate lunch at McDonalds in the airport before picking up our rental car.

Our rental was a tiny little Nissan Micra, and as we went to get in I went to the right side of the car . ..  oops, I guess I'm not driving, then over to the other side. In Ireland they drive on the left side of the road, Nathan was looking forward to this part of our trip as he would get to learn how to drive a right hand drive car.

Ready to start our adventure

The first few minutes was a little strange but almost right away we were on the freeway, where it didn't feel very different. The first thing we were trying to figure out was which lane was the slow lane, but as we came up on a semi truck he answered our question, the slow lane was on the left.

Crazy sculpture in Belfast

As we headed North towards Belfast we had freeway pretty much the entire way, but after leaving Belfast we found ourselves on a small 2 lane road. This road took us to our first destination which was a castle that I just wanted to snap a few pictures of, as it's actually castle ruins.

The Dunluce Castle was built on the edge of a rocky cliff back in the 13th century. In the late 1500's a Spanish ship wrecked on the rocks below, the goods from the ship wreck were sold and the money was used to help restore the castle. At some point after that the entire kitchen collapsed into the sea, and the mistress of the castle refused to live there after that, and the castle fell into ruin once again.

Nate found a hole in the ground . . . hope it wasn't the well.

Nate always getting near the edge of a cliff.

 When Nate and I got out of the car we discovered it was quite windy. We didn't plan on staying long as we wanted to get to the causeways with some time before they closed. Nate found some steps that went down the steep hillside and not surprisingly felt the need to go explore.  We found under the castle there is a cave in the rocks.

  With my ears freezing due to the wind we quickly made it back up the hill to the car. We had only a 15 minute drive to the causeways, then we parked and headed into the visitors center.  Luckily they took our American credit cards as that park of Ireland is actually part of the UK and they use an Irish Pound compared to the rest of Ireland that uses the euro.

You don't actually have to pay to visit the causeways, but if you want to go into the visitors center to go to the bathroom or even buy a postcard you have to pay an entrance fee. If you pay the entrance fee that also includes an audio guide that will tell you about different things as you walk out to the causeways and while your there.

There are 3 different pathways to the causeways, and easy, medium, and difficult path. We took the more difficult pathway that wound across the top of a cliff and then had some steep stairs and a winding path down to the causeways. I let Nate have the camera so I could concentrate on hiking and he could take pictures along the way.

I'm not on the phone, I'm listening to the audio guide and trying to keep my ears warm in the cold wind. This top trail is known as the windiest spot in all of Ireland.

A look at the onion rocks and the causeways from above.

From the top the causeways just look like a pile of rocks.

The causeways consists of about 40,000 hexagonal columns of rock, some that are over 12 meters tall. Caused by a volcanic eruption, when the highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds they formed an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. Horizontal contraction fractured in a similar way to drying mud, with the cracks propagating down as the mass cooled, leaving pillarlike structures.

 That may be how they where really formed, but they have a good Irish legend about them as well. The legend is about a giant named Finn MacCool who built the causeways to Scotland. Finn was challenged by a Scottish giant, Benandonner. Now Benandonner was much much larger than Finn, so he tried to think of a way out. His wife, Oonagh, came up with an ingenious idea. When Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him, Oonagh disguised Finn as a baby and tucked him in a cradle. When Benandonner came, Oonagh told him that Finn was out woodcutting, but he should be back soon. She showed him 'Finn's son'. When Benandonner saw the size of the baby, he had no desire to see the father! Benandonner fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway behind him, so the 'enormous Finn MacCool', would not follow him.

There are also some rocks that are said to be Finn's pipe organ, as he had a love of music, and if you go out to the causeways alone early on Christmas morning you may hear him playing a tune. There is also a large rock that is shaped like a boot, and no doubt it belonged to Finn MacCool.

Finn's pipe organ

Relaxing on a giant's boot!

These ones were probably 20' high

The legends make for good entertaining stories, but the work of God is magnificent. They really are beautiful, and the good Lord even blessed us with a lovely sunset.

 With only 15 minutes before the visitors center was going to close we took the last bus up to the visitors center so we could use the restroom one more time before our 3 hour drive to our stay for the night.

Nate was hoping we could get out of the UK area of Ireland before dinner because you never know who will take a US credit card. We decided we would just try and drive all the way to Sligo and then get dinner. We were supposed to check into our Bed and Breakfast between 4 & 8 PM and it was going to be pushing it to get there by 8.

One thing became more apparent as night fell, seeing was going to be a huge challenge. The headlights on our rental car were really bad. On the low beams they just weren't very bright, and the high beams were aimed in the ditch and didn't light the road in front of us, so we felt like we were constantly out driving our headlights. Even driving 50mph felt extremely fast (the speed limit was 60mph). As Nate put it, it was like driving a rally car with good lights at 120mph.

What made it worse was meeting cars or having them directly behind us. It really ruined our night vision and made it even more impossible to see. Luckily we did have a GPS that gave us a little idea of what the roads would be like, and I would warn Nate if I saw a sharper corner coming up on the GPS. Nate would try and get cars to pass us, and then we would try and follow them close enough that we could tell where the road was going.

The roads in Northern Ireland are very narrow, and there wasn't even a fog line, only the edge of a road that was only inches away from rock walls, bushes, or power polls. At one point I told Nate to slow down because I thought I saw animal eyes, and it was a sheep on the side of the road. Luckily it didn't step out in front of us. We both agreed that if we made it to our destination without crashing or going off the road, it was simply because the good Lord was watching over us.

That 3 hour drive was tense to say the least, and we decided that if at all possible we didn't want to be driving at night while in Ireland. About half way to Sligo we finally hit a road that had a fog line, and sometimes the lanes would even get a bit wider to make it a little less stressful. 

We found the Tree Tops Bed & Breakfast with little difficulty and upon ringing the doorbell we were greeted by a very nice lady named Doreen. She was rather short, probably not much over 5' tall, I would say she was in her mid 50's with dark brown curly hair. 

We told her that we hadn't eaten dinner yet and she gave us a map and told us about 5 of the best restaurants in the area.  Just down the road, across from the parking lot was an old Abbey, which looked really neat at night, but I hadn't brought my camera. We went to a couple of the restaurants that she highly recommended, but the first one had a 45 minute wait, and the second was booked full for the night. We ended up just eating dinner at a pub. The food was about a 6 on a scale of 1-10, but it was food none the less.