Giant's Causeway, Rugby, & Titanic Views

Belfast was lots of fun. We had a very busy weekend, and spent a lot of time on the bus. The ride was about 5 hours, and we had an hour stop at a mall in Dublin for lunch in between. Once we got to Belfast, we checked into out hostel and had free time to explore they city. It was cold and rainy and we didn't really know where we were going so after walking around a bit we decided to find a pub instead where we killed some time before dinner. After dinner we had everyone up to our room because it was so big. There were about twenty five beds in our hostel room and it held most of the girls in our program. after a few drinks we headed our for the night and went to a pub called The Beaten Docket. There was karaoke and afterwards the DJ played all sorts of fun American songs for us to dance to like "Born in the USA" and "Summer of '69." It was a great night out.
The next day we had to wake up early to head to Giant's Causeway, it was about and hour drive out of Belfast City. Once we got there we split up into smaller groups for tours. The Causeway was absolutely gorgeous and had the most spectacular views. Apparently it was formed thousands of years ago from volcanic eruptions under the ocean. Huge pillars made of rock formed and make up the causeway. There are celtic legends about a giant, Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) who built the causeway so he could walk to Scotland to fight a giant from over there. There were so many different myths about the rock formations and stories about what they look like. I took tons of pictures and had awesome views after we climbed about 150 steps to get to the top of the mountain. We stopped for lunch in a small town and then headed back to Belfast city so we could catch the Ireland vs. England rugby match. We found a pub and settled in to watch Ireland kick some British butt! I really enjoyed watching rubgy and am thinking about buying a Ireland rugby jersey.

We went to a hotel for dinner and then headed back to the hostel to get ready to go out for the night. Mike Mo was also in Belfast with his group from BC so I went out to meet him at Robinson's pub. We danced to some Trad music and had a few pints before I had to leave to meet up the the Arcadia kids at a nightclub near our hostel. It was the biggest club I have ever been to and there were so many people! Luckily I found everyone quickly and we danced until they turned on the lights and kicked us out.



Sunday morning we had someone come speak to us about the different murals around Beflast. It was so interesting learning about the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the different viewpoints of both the Unionists and the Nationalist. He showed us examples of murals by the IRA and the UFF, they were so interesting. A lot of them were really intimidating with men pointing guns and threatening poems. After lunch we got on the bus to take a tour around Belfast to see the murals. We were able to get out and take pictures and went to both sides of town, the Loyalists and the Nationalists. We also stopped at the dry port where the Titanic was built. We saw exactly where it first took off from and went to a little exhibit. Belfast used to have a very large ship building industry.

After the thour around Beflast we got back on the bus for our long ride home. I slept most of the way and we had a quick stop for dinner. It was so cool to be able to see such a different part of Ireland with such different political views. I did enjoy the trip, but I think I prefer the Southern part of Ireland more. In fact, we are thinking of booking a trip to Dingle this weekend, one of the most popular tourist attractions, I hear it's beautiful!