British Isles Travels-Belfast, Northern Ireland

Once more across the Irish Sea and we are at our only port in Northern Ireland, Belfast. As it turns out, this was a day filled with awesome natural wonders. We boarded a motor coach for a two hour ride up the Antrim Coast of NE Ireland. Absolutely beautiful sea views, craggy mountains, lovely farmlands covered with cows and sheep then finally the Giant’s Causeway. It is worth looking up Giant’s Causeway on Google; remarkable natural wonder. We had never heard of it, but it was just about our favorite sight in all of the UK. The Giant’s Causeway is solidified lava from one of the flows that filled a river valley 60 million years ago. It cooled and cracked through the depth of the flow creating columns and pavement like surfaces. OR you can believe the legend about Finn MacCool. Finn wanted to do battle with a rival giant in Scotland known as Benandonner so he built enormous stepping stones across the sea so the Scottish giant could cross to Ireland to face the challenge. When Finn saw the size of the approaching Benandonner he ran home and had his wife disguise him as a baby. When Benandonner saw the size of the “infant” he assumed the father must be gigantic indeed and fled back to Scotland ripping up the Causeway in case he was followed. Whatever the truth, after a mile walk down to the columns we had a marvelous time walking up and down the stones. Another favorite thing that day was that every single country church along the coast had its own graveyard out front filled with fantastic ancient tombstones. Almost injured myself trying to photograph the gravestones from the moving bus. Loved it. Throughout this nine hour adventure we had several food stops that we enjoyed. The first was at a small inn for morning scones and clotted cream and lunch was at a hotel’s huge glass room for salmon and gooseberry tart. Unfortunately we spent very little time in the city of Belfast because of the long day traveling north. Travel Note: On this trip our cabin safe was filled with ziploc bags of currency. One had our US money, another Euros and another British Pounds Sterling (GBP). In Ireland and France we used Euros and in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England we needed Pounds, so we were constantly switching out coins and paper money. That’s one way to learn about the global economy. MA