Blogs from Antrim, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, Europe - page 2

So today I headed out on a daytrip to the Giant's Causeway, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and Derry. I made a new friend last night at the hostel, Jenni, and she saved me a seat on the bus. Nice to have a seat companion without having to ask that question "Can I sit with you?" I hate that! We headed out to the rope bridge, and our tour guide had told us it would be £2.70 if we went in together with 15+ people. When we reached the cashier to buy our tickets, she told us that the money was supposed to have been collected by the tour guide ahead of time, and that he knew that. We ended up paying £3.36 instead. We only had about an hour to do the 1 mile walk to ... read more

Toady our plan was to see as much of the south Antrim coastline as possible before we head north towards the Giants Causeway and Derry tomorrow. Last night was the first time we stayed in a hostel and shared a room with 10 others. Of course this is all practice for our world trip and it was a mixed bag. Its hard to concentrate on sleeping with people coming and going out of the room but I’m sure with practice we’ll get used to it. When I say we, I really mean me, cause Michelle had no problems sleeping at all!! Surprise surprise! When this morning came our inhibitions of sharing disappeared and we headed for the kitchen and set ourselves up for the day. Plenty of cereal and toast and a pile of corned beef ... read more

County Antrim, Northern Ireland This area of Northern Ireland is beautiful with its coastal views and greenery everywhere. This campground has the local bus stop right at the reception office, so we hopped on and got a special "Hop on Hop Off" ticket for the day. The Giant Causeway was our first stop, and this is a fascinating area of ancient rocks. The scientific explanation is...the over 40,000 interlocking basalt columns are the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is both a World Heritage Site and a National Nature Reserve. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal. Then, there is the legendary explanation... about an Irish Giant (Finn McCool) who built a causeway to walk to Scotland. ... read more

Day 7 - Belfast We woke up before our wake-up call because we were so excited about our train trip today to Belfast for our tour to the Giants Causeway. We walked to the Connolly train station which was just a block away and found our guide in the yellow jacket right away. At the train station we met a new friend named Violeta who is from Macedonia. She is a lovely young woman who was on a business trip and added a couple days for holiday. The train ride was nice and comfortable and not too many people were in our train car. Upon arriving in Belfast we went to the Hilton to use the facilities and then boarded our tour bus. Unfortunately, we were the last to board the bus and there were only ... read more

Happenin?, Getting really itchy feet with 6 weeks to go before I leave, so thought I'd give this travel blog thing a go see how it works. Seem to spend half my life at the minute formulating plans for when I'm away. Current plan is 2 months in India, 1st month I'll be climbing some unclimbed peaks in the Himalayas (hopefully getting to the top). Second month I'm gonna do a bit of travelling in India, Dharamsala in the north, then head to Rajasthan, Mumbai and maybe Goa. After that going to Vietnam for 2 weeks, Cambodia for 2 weeks and then Thailand maybe for a month. After that the plans get a bit hazy, but I'm flying from Singapore to Australia, where I'll have to work, then Oz to New Zealand, then Fiji, California and ... read more