The last of the four parts of the United Kingdom for me to visit and before I did a bit of research, not one that I was terribly interested in visiting. That changed when I started reading this book, developed a minor obsession with Game of Thrones and found out about the Giant’s Causeway. With a spare weekend and two fellow Londoners who hadn’t been, we braved RyanAir one more time.
After arriving, first order of business was to rent a car and drive the Causeway Coastal Route up to the Giant’s Causeway, a beautiful road with tunnels like this all the way up.
A stop for a pub lunch on the way.
The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge not leading anywhere in particular.
Don’t look down. Apparently fisherman used to navigate the much less safer bridge (think a rope and some thing to hold on to if you were lucky) to get their day’s catch. No thanks.
Some of the glorious coastal scenery, also doubles as a Game of Thrones filming location.
On a cold and stormy day, we arrived at Giant’s Causeway and its amazing hexagonal rock formations. It can be explained by geology, but it’s still an incredible sight.
Legend has it a giant named Finn MacCool tried to fight a giant in Scotland and built this causeway to reach him, the Scottish giant pussied out and destroyed his side hence why it goes into the sea like this.
A really old, phallic light house looking out to the freezing north sea. COLD.
The full Irish breakfast from St George’s market with soda bread for “soakage”.
After reading my book about the troubles, a black cab tour was essential and this wall separating catholic and protestant communities is one of many that serve as a reminder to what happened over the 3 decades of the troubles and still haunts this city.
The Titanic Museum, although being a must-see in Belfast, didn’t really add anything to what I knew about the ship itself, although I did learn a lot about how big the ship building boom was in Belfast around that time, not so much now. The building itself is also a beautiful piece of symmetry.
This was cool though, standing on the bow of the titanic as seen by James Cameron’s mission to photograph the wreck lying on the bottom of the ocean.
Overall, I recommend getting to Belfast for the weekend, see the Giant’s Causeway on one of the days you are there and head to Filthy McNasty’s for a pint or two!