So this weekend is the first of 3 trips our program has planned for us. We’re heading up to Belfast in Northern Ireland, the Britain side of the country. As with most countries, the British had their power struggle with Ireland as well. I’m not at all a history major so I can’t and won’t attempt to really get into any of that. All I know is that for a really long time Ireland was under British rule and there were a lot of issues. The troubles with Britain have actually only recently ended within the past decade or so, and things aren’t as bad as they used to be, but there is certainly still a sore spot. When you cross over the border into Northern Ireland you are technically in the UK. I found that out the hard way when my phone cut off while I was talking to my grandmother. Then we all got messages on our phones saying that we were officially in the UK, yeah it was great. The bus ride was about 4.5 to 5 hours long. For those who don’t know, Cork is in the southern part of Ireland. I kind of like to think of Ireland as a diamond shape (even though it is far from it) just to help me figure things out geographically. History was never really my thing so I try to simplify it for myself. If Ireland is a diamond, Cork is the bottom point and Belfast is the top point. It only takes about 5 hours to go from one to the other, if that gives you any idea of the size of Ireland. It really isn’t a big island. It also is NOT diamond shaped, so don’t start thinking that it is. So the point is we went to the opposite end of the country.
Since we spent so long on the bus they didn’t have anything planned for the first night. They fed us dinner at the hotel and then gave us free reign for the rest of the night. As with most meals here, dinner was started off by a bowl of soup. I really don’t know what it is, but they puree all of their soups. Every time I’ve had a soup here it’s a bowl with an oddly colored liquid in it, and you don’t know what it is until you try it. This soup was green and turned out to be some kind of broccoli soup. Most of their soups are actually some kind of vegetable soup, maybe because it’s easier to puree vegetables, but either way I have yet to dislike any of them. The rest of dinner was kind of buffet style. There was a burger with onions, chicken curry and rice, and salmon with a sauce on it. Those were served to you, then there was all sorts of salad things and then they had their big bowl of potatoes there (there always have to be potatoes) and there was a pan of fries and I think there was corn. I can’t really say I remember (there’s a picture). The hard thing about this weekend was that I had my computer for the sake of emptying out my memory cards and charging my cameras, that really was about the only thing I did with it because outside of sleeping at night, there really wasn’t much time spent in the hotels. So it is now the week after and I’m attempting to recall everything. The pictures help but at the same time it takes 10 times longer to write this if I’m trying to look through the pictures and remember. There are a lot of pictures and actually the girls are convinced that I have a problem and that they are going to cure me of it by the end of this semester. It’s not going to happen. I LOVE taking pictures of any and everything, even if it isn’t exactly the safest moment for me to do so. Colleen has apparently been keeping tabs on how many near misses I’ve had while taking pictures of something. Haha yeah they usually have to keep track of me every few minutes to make sure I’m still with them. I also have the tendency to stop to take pictures and I’m not worried about the fact that everyone is still walking off; it’s not really my biggest concern. As long as I can still see them it’s completely fine.
After dinner (we’re still only on night 1 in Belfast) a few of us went out for a walk to see what was in the area. We found the city hall which is massive, and very beautifully lit at night. Since it was closed there wasn’t really a whole lot that we could see of it, but it was gorgeous, and the light poles on the outside of it had little cherubs on them and each one was doing or holding something different. The Irish were certainly very detailed when it came to designing their important buildings. All of the older buildings are absolutely stunning in how they are built. Since we couldn’t go into the courtyard we continued walking down the main street just to see what else was there. We saw a bar called The Washington which Claire is convinced is historical. We haven’t been able to find out why, but it had American flags on it. Why there were American flags, we have no clue, but it seemed very bizarre to see an American symbol of any kind anywhere. We walked even further into town and found a pub called The Garrick which is definitely a historical pub; it even said so. We decided to go in and Claire and Susan got drinks. I was preoccupied by the different designs on the sterling currency that they use. Even though Belfast is geographically a part of Ireland it is considered to be a part of Great Britain, therefore they use the pound instead of the euro. So we were told that we had to do a currency exchange when we got up there even though they actually take both currencies because it is still technically Ireland. We didn’t know that until after the fact though, so we all had sterling and just used it. It’ll come in handy in a couple of weeks anyways when we go to London, so it wasn’t a total waste to end up with a bunch of it at the end of the weekend. The really neat thing about The Garrick though is that they don’t just tell you what kind of drinks they serve you. On their list of drinks they also have listed out what country the drink originates from. I would have taken a picture but I felt very awkward already just taking pictures of the flags hanging on the ceiling. Most of the drinks were beers from Germany but I do remember seeing countries like Japan and Kenya on there. Not really two places I would ever imagine making any kind of beer or wine, but I guess you learn something new every day. I certainly did while I was in Belfast. Actually The Garrick had a quote on the side of it that I really liked. It said, “A nation that keeps one eye on the past is wise. A nation that keeps two eyes on the past is blind.” With all of the struggles that have gone on in Ireland and with them recovering still, it seemed like a very fitting quote. After The Garrick we went back to our hotel since we needed to be up and ready to go by 8:30 the next morning.
The IFSA program isn’t really one for details. All they do is give us the time for when our day starts and then tells us where we need to meet them all. They tell us what we’re doing as it’s happening, meaning as we’re on the bus driving to places they do the typical “we are coming up on to your left/right” or “in a few minutes we will be arriving at .” Which is great, until 5 minutes before you find out you’re going to take a mile and a half long walk to cross a rope bridge that hangs over an 80 foot chasm. It’s one of those things that when you hear what it is that you’re going to do you have to ask for it to be repeated so that you know you heard correctly. The really cool thing about it is that when you cross the bridge to the other little island you can see Scotland off the coast because it’s actually only 12 miles away. When we got there I did cross the bridge to the other side. It really wasn’t bad, the only slightly nerve wracking thing was the fact that the people behind us decided they wanted to shake the bridge as they crossed. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but it was fine and the view was amazing. I’m probably going to say it a bunch of times as I describe everything we did on Friday, but it was all gorgeous. Everything about being on the coast line and looking out over the water, no matter where we were, was absolutely breath-taking. I’ll let the pictures attest to that. I learned on Friday that you can take A LOT of pictures of just water and no matter what it’s all still beautiful. I found a setting on my camera that will continually take pictures as long as I’m pressing the button. Guess what I did while we were on the bus driving along the coast. I took over 900 pictures on Friday alone and I can guarantee you 90% of them are of water or land in the distance over some kind of water. It was incredible. I usually fall asleep on bus rides to places because I get slightly nauseous when I’m in moving vehicles for a long time, but I didn’t sleep at all while we were on the bus because there was just so much to see and I didn’t want to miss any of what was around me. I actually ended up having my own seat as well on the bus which was nice. Nothing against other people but it was great to not have someone next to me talking because then I would have felt really mean because I would have found everything that was outside of the bus more interesting than anything they could say to me. So it worked out really well.
Once we left the rope bridge we actually headed to lunch because our other two stops couldn’t have all 3 buses there at the same time. So our bus driver took the option of lunch first, site seeing later. So we drove out to a hotel nearby where they served us lunch. We got a really long time for lunch so when our table was done we all headed out towards the shore and went for a walk on the rocks. After a little while it turned into a search for sea shells. It reminded me so much of when I was little and I used to spend most of my time at a beach looking for the biggest sea shells I could find and I would bring them home with me. I actually think that I have a jar filled with some of the smaller shells I collected somewhere at home, but I collected quite a few while we were out on the rocks and they have added to the decoration in my room. Which actually outside of the picture that was already here I have a cork board that is now covered by paper snowflakes and the adorable picture my big colored for me. That’s really the extent of decoration in here because they’re very strict about it. If they find a hole in the wall or see a mark from tape they fine you for it, so they give you the cork board to use and that’s it.
After lunch and collecting sea shells we all got back on the buses and headed to Dunluce Castle. It is one of the most well known castles in Ireland and unfortunately when it was finally destroyed it cost too much to restore it and all that is left are the ruins. Even though that’s all that is left you can still tell that it was a grand castle. There really isn’t much I can say about the castle, the pictures show everything and it has a great view. It rests right on the coast and apparently the kitchen fell into the ocean in the middle of a dinner party once. Whether that’s true or not, the Irish have so many interesting stories about everything here. I may not be big on history, but I’ve enjoyed learning a lot of different things about what I’m seeing and where I am. It’s actually interesting to learn about and I can’t say the same thing about most of America’s history.
We didn’t spend a whole lot of time at the castle. Maybe because since it’s all in ruins there really isn’t a whole lot to see, but we headed out to Giant’s Causeway. It is an area made up of thousands of columns from ancient volcanic activity. Most of the columns are hexagonal (or hectagonal as I incorrectly said the first time) and form different shapes that have been linked to a myth of the Giant Finn MacCool. I wish I could remember the actual myth, but what I do remember is that the Causeway was created as a challenge to Finn’s Scottish rival. The part I do remember is that it took Finn MacCool’s wife to solve whatever issue Finn was facing. She dressed Finn up as a baby and wrapped him in blankets and put him in a cradle. When his rival came to see Finn, his wife told the guy not to wake the baby. Upon seeing “the baby” the Scottish guy got afraid and said that if that was the baby he didn’t want to stick around to see how big the dad was. Point being, Mrs. MacCool outsmarted him and saved her husband. I’m sure you can all figure out why I would remember that part. When we got out to the rocks we didn’t really go walking around to find all of the different formations. Actually it had started raining at that point and the waves that were coming up were pretty big and we were all more interested in the ocean than the columns. We did walk around a little bit but I enjoyed spending more time taking pictures of the wakes and them crashing up against the shore than doing anything else. We spend almost an hour out on the rocks before we headed back. That was the end of our site seeing for the day. That night we were on our own for dinner and a group of us decided to go to The Washington and see it for ourselves. We ended up at a very awkwardly located table in the center of the floor and across from us was the man who was providing the music for the night. He played a bunch of American tunes on his guitar and sang (he was actually really good) and being a bunch of Americans, we sang along with him. I think he appreciated how much we enjoyed his performance and it was a great end to our night; well my night. I ended up going back to the hotel while the rest of the girls went back to the Garrick to split a round of half pints.
This post is really long and I haven’t even covered all of what we did on Saturday so I think I’ll put it in a separate one because we did A LOT on that day as well. I’ll get started on that once I put this up.
With Love Always
potato famine... feckin british
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you hung up my picture. I worked hard on it.