April 25 Giants Causeway

We had to get up at 745 to catch the bus in order to do our day trip to the Giants Causeway. Bryce decided to stay home last minute and try to contact some distant relative he has living outside of Belfast. Our hostel hosts informed us to sit on the right hand side of the bus as we'd be driving up the coast. We made it to the pick up point Cam and I, Alex from New Jersey tagged along with us. He figured he had enough time to grab a "cohffee" (his Jersey accent comes out every once in awhile) I told him to be quick. He ended up being the last one on the bus hopping on while cursing the slow wait staff. I guess he went to get French toast and it was served covered in what he described as BBQ sauce.

Our driver was pretty funny, he had the typical lame tour guide jokes but also a few diamonds in the rough. Out first stop was a castle just north of the city right on the sea. It was cool enough, but I'm still waiting to see a proper castle with a moat and draw bridge. Cam and I being the geniuses that we are forgot our cameras, so no photos of this leg of the trip.

Next stop was the rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede, it's a bridge that's 85 meters high I didn't cross it due to my fear of heights and the wind was extremely strong. Cam said the view was cool on the other side, but I don't think I missed much. The road along the coast was pretty cool, I guess it's used for motorcycle races in the summer. We passed a lot of small villages on the way each with its own bit of history. I guess Winston Churchill owned a hotel in one of them. Next stop was the Bushmills distillery its the oldest legal distillery in the UK, the smell was intense. The whole distillery stunk of yeast and whiskey, I didn't try any. I don't have any idea when it's comes to whiskey. I didn't want to slam a glass back in front of the employees only to bitch about it burning down my throat.

Last stop was the Giants Causeway, the driver had been hyping up it the whole time. It's been voted third best natural attraction in the world (third only to the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls) and it's the number one attraction in the UK. I was pretty disappointed when we arrived, the causeway is a group of rocks that are all hexagonal in shape, and this was done naturally by volcanos over millions of years. But that's it it's just some rocks that all interlock, there isn't even a lot of them. I was disappointed. We took the bus back into Belfast, I liked the Loch Ness tour better, but it was cheap and great to see the Irish country side. Another pub crawl tonight, and there's two cute Aussie girls in our room for the next few days.