Travel Tuesday || Northern Ireland Bus Tour
On our second day overseas, Caleb and I woke up before the crack of dawn to walk to a bus full of people ready to embark on a tour all the way from Dublin to the tip of the island at Giant’s Causeway. We had sleepy eyes and shiver spines, but to say we were excited would be an understatement.
The minute I had read about Giant’s Causeway a few years ago, I decided I MUST go. Luckily for me, I learned that Dublin runs tons of bus tours to Giant’s Causeway. That gave me a problem: which one to choose? The decision was rough until I found Finn McCool’s Game of Thrones Tour. (No ad here! I just really loved it, and if you ever want to book a bus tour overseas, I’d highly recommend them!) It wasn’t just that we liked Game of Thrones, it was one of the most comprehensive tours we found online. 
Immediately upon embarking, our tour guide launched into a hilarious, really thorough history of the areas we passed through. Above, you can see the Moutains of Mourne (like the song)! We were able to doze a bit until we reached Belfast. For an hour we wandered the city center. We ate breakfast at the fanciest Burger King we’d ever seen, and then headed over to the Titanic Memorial Garden at the Belfast City Hall. The memorial is the only one in the world that commemorates every single victim of the disaster. As is the case with most memorial monuments, seeing it was a humbling experience.
We hopped back on the bus and headed over to our next stop, the Dark Hedges. These towering trees create a tunnel (say that five times fast) that has been there for hundreds of years. It’s no wonder this road was featured in Game of Thrones, because it looks like it is straight out of a fantasy novel. (As do most things in Ireland, honestly.)
Our bus edged its way through the people at the hedges, and our next stop was Dunluce Castle. Dunluce is a bit ruinous but nonetheless magnificent. It teeters on the edge of a cliff. Much like the castle, riding on a huge bus along the mountainous coast also felt like teetering on a cliff. And so we continued, teetering on toward Giant’s Causeway.
Long legend short, a giant built this as a bridge to go fight another giant, but after being tricked into thinking the other giant would be way bigger than him, he tore the bridge up when he fled. Science and nature says Giant’s Causeway was made by a volcanic eruption in a very specific environment that resulted in about 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns. It’s up to you to decide which one to believe!
It was about a mile walk down to see the causeway. Word on the street is soon they will be roping it off to where people won’t be able to walk on them anymore. Standing on the edge of the columns feels like you’re in The Little Mermaid. There are waves crashing up against the rocks, and little tide pools with teeny creatures clinging to rocks. Though I’d already been in Dublin a day, standing on the edge of a country really knocked it into me that I was not in Arkansas any more.
We had a lovely two hours to spend there. We had a mini-picnic lunch by the ocean and then climbed around and (obviously) took photos. After a brisk walk back to the bus, we rambled on to Ballintoy Harbour. This second half of the tour made me want to move to Northern Ireland. Each little fishing village we passed through with their little harbours, quaint houses, and green hills filled with sheep made it seem like we were touring a fairy tale.
(Get a kick out of a man in a wedding party catching me admiring their yellow VW van.)
Next stop, Larrybane Quarry! At this point my strained ankle was screaming at me (maybe because I just HAD to take jumping pictures?) Half of the tour went to the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, while the rest of us went over to a little formation that stood up high enough to see far islands (including Scotland!) and water that looked like glass. I feel like I keep writing similes and metaphors in these blogs, but I don’t know how else to make it clear how beautiful everything was.
Our last stop of the night was at Cushendun to see the cave. And the goat. Who was camera shy. I’m not kidding, this is the town goat, named Mirriam. There used to be another town goat, named Johann, who is memorialized in sculpture. This is the town I want to live in.
I said that was our last stop, but we did take a bathroom break in Belfast on the way home. Fun story: trying to rush to get back to the bus in time, I realized too late that my toilet stall did not have toilet paper. You know who else realized too late? The other 3 women in the bathroom with me, as we tried to see if anyone could pass around the paper. Alas, there was no paper to pass.
There you have it! Northern Ireland in a nutshell. Hope you enjoyed today’s tour, and check back again next week for the second leg of our trip: London!
Our other adventures:
Travel Tuesday: First Flight and Dublin