Northern Ireland [feat. Loz & Julz]

Giant's Causeway

After our Summer travels it was back to work and back to reality. Having said that, I was lucky enough to have some good friends of mine from back home over in the UK and traveling around, this provided me with an excellent excuse for some weekend getaways! After only one week back at work I was headed off for a weekend in Northern Ireland!

Loz and Julz were kind enough to pick me up from the airport, after a bright and early flight into Belfast airport! They had a hire car and I just got to join in on their plans, the first stop being The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. 

The Giant's Causeway is a coastal area of Northern Ireland and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The day we visited it was cold, windy and also slightly rainy - just the kind of amazing weather we have grown accustomed to in the UK :-P

The Giant's Causeway is a really strange natural phenomenon and is composed of rocks in the shape of columns that are arranged really closely together, I actually don't know how to explain it, it's a really strange site. 

While we were at Giant's Causeway we went along on a free guided tour, which turned out to be one of the strangest tours I have ever been on. The tour guide told us all sorts of Irish Folklore stories about a Giant called Fin McCool who lived at Giant's Causeway and was always waging wars against Scottish Giants.

Supposedly, Fin McCool created the Isle of Man by pulling a lump of earth from the group and throwing it towards a Scottish Giant... sounds believable.. There were all sorts of strange mythical stories about Fin McCool and his supposed escapades. 

Behind Loz and myself you can see all the rock columns. 

As you can tell from these photos, it was a super windy day and Loz and my hair was pretty much out of control!

We spent a few hours exploring on the guided tour and exploring Giant's Causeway before heading back to the car to drive to our next Northern Ireland destination. 

Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge

Our next destination was a short drive away and another really random destination!

Below is a really nice photo of Loz and Julz on the Northern Ireland coast, the cliffs created such a dramatic backdrop and the water was actually a beautiful colour but most likely too freezing for anyone to ever set foot in!

The Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge creates a link between the mainland of Northern Ireland and a really tiny island called Carrick-A-Rede. The rope bridge was built by Salmon fishermen who used to come to this tiny island to do their fishing. I cannot imagine the weather was often pleasant for those poor fishermen!

The rope bridge is about 20m long and is about 30m above the water. There was an 8 people limit, so not many people could walk over the bridge at once! I am not a huge fan of heights or the thought of falling from any kind of height so the bridge made me a little anxious!

Fortunately the scenery on the other side of the bridge was pretty beautiful!

The coastline of Northern Ireland is actually really beautiful, too bad it is cold and windy pretty much all year around!

The photo above is actually slightly misleading because there were certainly plenty of tourists at the bridge on the same day as us but somehow I timed this photo perfectly and the masses of people seemed to part for a second!

Belfast

After a big morning of exploring Northern Ireland we headed back to Belfast, where we were staying for the weekend. We checked into our AirBnB accommodation and then it was time for the essentials: drinks in an Irish Pub!

We had a pub dinner and then ended up going out to a craft beer bar, which was really cool, Loz and I had some interesting ciders and Julz got a little sampler of Irish craft beers. We had a pretty chilled night, lots of drinks and lots of catching up on the past year and a half!

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The following day Loz had organised a Black Cabs tour for us.

The photo below is of Loz and I outside the City Hall, this was our meeting place for the tour but it was actually just a really beautiful building and there was even a little bit of sun out on this day!

We jumped in our Black Cab tour for, what turned out to be, a tour of Belfast that explained the violent history between the Catholic and Protestants in Northern Ireland. This is a feud that has been in effect for hundreds of years but culminated in "the Troubles" which was pretty much a civil war that occurred between both of these religious groups between 1969-1998.

In the above photos is a big wall that was built to separate the Catholic and Protestants communities, who were unable to leave in peace. Unfortunately, this is still here and it seems like it is still needed as these two groups both have very extreme beliefs and are unable to co-exist peacefully. 

Lots of famous people have signed the wall so our friendly tour guide told us that we all had to sign the wall!

After a pretty intense morning learning about the history of Northern Ireland we decided to relax and unwind a little before I had to get my flight back to London. 

We decided that Irish Coffees were the way to do this!

The Irish coffees not only looked amazing but were actually really delicious as well!

After a really fun and very different weekend spent in Northern Ireland it was unfortunately time to head back to London and back to work, again!

I had a fantastic weekend with Loz and Julz and now all I need is for some more of my friends to come and visit the UK so I have some more excuses for some weekend escapes!