Dublin and Northern Ireland

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Well,

My Dad came to visit earlier this month. We visited the Tower Bridge Exhibition in London together and got to watch the bridge open which was really neat. I will try to get a video posted on youtube so you can see it at home! I found it quite cool. Anyhow, after the bit of London adventure, we boarded a flight to Dublin arriving late Friday night. We made the most of our 2 days there, booked in for a North Coast and Malahide Castle tour on Saturday AM for 3 hours, it was really interesting, beautiful coast! The castle was neat, couldn't take pictures inside but they had 1 room that was especially cool. It had a loft that held a band for special banquets! After our tour, we hung around in Dublin city centre, did some shopping and enjoyed the views of the city. We went to Christ Church Cathedral for a service which was quite impressive, very old - nearly 1,000 yrs old! The singing was awesome and it also got us out of the rain (which was insane). We got settled into a B & B for the night and then went to see Riverdance in theatre. I LOVED Riverdance, it was totally awesome, great combo of music and dance. Fantastic.

Sunday AM was an early start at 4:40, went to get our bus trip to Northern Ireland (part of the UK) to see the Giants Causeway and Rope Bridge....it was an interesting adventure as they didn't have our names on the list so we waited for 30 mins to find they would take us. We hadn't got breakfast so we were hungry travellers driving about 2 hours to Belfast to pick up more passengers before finally arriving at the Rope Bridge spot at 11 or so. We ate a ton of stuff at the little cafe, had just enough time left to go and cross the bridge which was sketchy and really high! The views were just incredible though, I loved it. I had a nice time taking it all in before heading back on the bus to go to the Giants Causeway. It was scheduled to have lunch there but we weren't informed of that so we got more free time to explore...also full from our cake indulgences. It was even more beautiful in some of the valleys there. Lots of sheep everywhere, they have a ton of stuff with sheep on it. I guess it's one of their icons. My favorite were the white sheep with black heads, so sweet. Anyways, impressive views, nice hike and went back to the bus. The driver wasn't concerned about the fact that 1/2 the passengers were late so we got more shopping time. Hurray. I talked to him about our arrival time back in Dublin as we had a flight to catch. Well, we were told by the tourism office that it was arrival at 6:30. The driver said, No, we will be lucky to be back by 8:30PM! TROUBLE as our flight closed at 9:30. So, it was a stressful rest of the trip for me, freaked out about it but realized we were pretty stuck being in NI and flying out of Dublin. So, we hoped for the best and made it clear to the bus driver our situation. We also stopped in Londonderry, more known as Derry. They have a big hate on for the English in NI so they drop the London reference. Weird as it is part of the UK. It was July 12 so the Orange Festival was going on, a big Protestant celebration. There were fire piles everywhere and planned marches for the day. There is still quite a lot of division in that area which surprised me but shows we all have things to learn! Haha. Anyways, I got tons of information on a walking tour we had of the city. We hopped back on the bus for the journey back, luckily our bus driver was considerate and seriously helpful dropping us off at the airport on the way into Dublin. So, we had enough time to check in and actually sat down for about 20 mins before boarding. Amazing. It never felt so good to get home before! Close call. So, that was a bit of my trip there.
Hugs, C

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Photos

Posing with the Garda
Irish police

Malahide Castle
Dad and Chloe

Friendly with the fisherman
I did a little bit of sewing weights into the nets at this stop!

Bonfire for Orange Fest
Londonderry or Derry