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Published: December 28th 2008
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Old Castle
An old castle on a cliff, Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland. Although it can be absolutely exhausting, my mantra for avoiding jetlag is as follows. Schedule a late afternoon flight to Europe, arriving early the following day, and stay up. Yes, just stay up! Stay awake as long as you can and plan a couple of activities. After an early dinner, you will sleep like the proverbial baby and awaken the following day and will be accustomed to 'local time.' This is what worked for me in 2005, with a direct flight from Chicago to Dublin, staying awake for 39 hours straight, but waking up the next day on 'Ireland time.'
After landing in Dublin and checking into the hotel and with a quick survey of a local map, I decided that a 107 mile trip to Northern Ireland shouldn't be TOO taxing. Ah, silly girl. You see, there aren't very many good major routes in Ireland that are north-south. Most of the GOOD roads are east-west. If you want to drive north in Ireland, you may need to find a road that takes you 20 miles west from Dublin just so you can connect with a road that takes you 10 miles north. Then you may need to get onto
Driving
Driving through Northern Ireland. a road taking you 25 miles further west just to find a road that takes you another 10 miles north. The narrow roads wind through small villages along the way, with cars parked on both sides of the street, leaving only one lane available for two way traffic to pass. It can take as much as 30-45 minutes to drive through some of these villages since you need to wait your turn to drive down the street. As the crow flies, it may be 107 miles to the Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland from Dublin, but in reality, I think it's more like 600 miles. Or at least that's what it seemed like. It took over six hours to drive from Dublin to Portrush in Northern Ireland, our beginning point on the Antrim Coast. Six hours to go 107 miles? It sounds like a complete exageration, but it's absolutely the truth. The following year I was stupid enough to make the drive from the west coast of Ireland to Northern Ireland in one day. But that's another story. ;-)
The A2 from Portush along the Antrim Coast is among the most beautiful and scenic drives that I've ever taken.
Coastal Road View
The A2 from east from Portrush, Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland. From the carnival like atmosphere of Portrush heading east, this narrow road winds along the coast atop chalky cliffs reminiscent of the White Cliffs of Dover in England, ribboning its way through through tiny villages perched on the very edges of the cliffs.
A short drive wast from Portrush on the A2 brings us to the Giants Causeway, an area of huge columns resulting from an ancient volcanic eruption. The tops of these columns, located at the base of a cliff, are negotiable by foot. Although the sizes of the columns differ in height, some stretch as high as 36 feet. Rumor has it that the legendary Irish Finn McCool built the giant causeway to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner.
While at the Causeway, you can view it from either atop the cliffs or you can make the trek down a paved path to the sea and actually walk on the tops of the columns. They are slippery, and the North Sea is cold, so take caution. The Causeway is an English Heritage Trust site, so expect to pay for admission. If you expect that you will be visiting more than a couple English Heritage sites, it may
Antrim Coastline
The coastline along the A2, Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland. be worth it to purchase a membership in the English Heritage Trust at http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.895.
A yearly adult pass will run you almost 42 pounds (around 70 dollars by today's count), but with admission to some sites costing that much or more, just one visit to another English Heritage site will pay for the pass and then some.
Also remember that Northern Ireland is part of the UK and Ireland is part of the European Union. Northern Ireland uses the British pound and will NOT accept Euros and Ireland uses the Euro and will not accept the pound. You will need both currencies if you plan to visit both countries.
Since this was our first day in Ireland and we'd been awake for so many hours, we only visited the Giants Causeway before heading back to Dublin. We made a side trip through a small town outside of Belfast and what an eye opening experience that was! As we headed toward the town, we passed heavily reinforced IRA trucks on the road. As we approached the town, it became apparent that there was a street fair of some sort taking place. However, there were heavily armed IRA soldiers patrolling
Antrim Coast
View from the A2, Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland. the streets with their submachine guns slung over their shoulders and the people walked amongst them as if it were normal! I can remember seeing a few people pushing baby strollers along the sidewalk and past these armed IRA agents and thinking about how bad things must have been in Northern Ireland at some point that they had adopted such a blase attitude toward it. I don't believe that Belfast would sport such sights today, but since I haven't been back to Belfast since, I couldn't say for certain.
But it was time to head back to Dublin to prepare for the following day's U2 concert at Croke Park.
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