Kiss Me, I'm Irish!

*There are lots of collages in this post. Click to see them larger.*

So here it is, the long awaited post about our trip to Northern Ireland in August. I promised Brent's grandma that if she looked at the blog on Friday, she'd be able to read about it. Here I am, squeaking it in at the last minute...

I'm going to shamelessly plug our favorite travel guides now. Our friends Calvin & Carike introduced us to the AA (UK's AAA) travel guides. They are brilliant! They have guides for whole countries, geographical areas, cities, counties, pretty much anywhere you can think of or need. For this trip, we bought the Essential Ireland guide. We planned the whole trip based off of the suggestions in this book, and a few more I picked up on the Northern Ireland tourist website. I love the the layout and the way they are color coded and they are so much less wordy than Lonely Planet and Rick Steve's guides. Don't get me wrong, those are great guides too but AA's are much better for the ADD inside of everyone that just wants pictures and basic facts. Anyway, AA Essential Ireland travel guide = fabulous holiday. Plus, since it's for the whole of Ireland, we can use it again next year when we plan the trip to the Republic with my parents. Go AA!

On Friday morning (28 August) we flew into Belfast. We picked up our rental car and drove into the city. It was raining off an on and we soon realized this would be the constant throughout our trip. While we were in Belfast we:

-Checked out St. Malachy's Church, The Gaslamp District, St George's Farmer's Market, the new theater on the river, saw a few old police stations that made it VERY obvious there were some serious political troubles in the past, the Queens Bridge and the giant sculpture/statue at the end of the bridge

-Brent led us on a self guided tour of the Titanic Quarter since we had missed the times for the professional ones. We followed the signs down to where the ship was built.

-Found our way back to the center of town and saw some interesting modern art, Prince Albert Clock Tower, City Hall, the Belfast Eye, and had the most scrumptious dinner at a little cafe tucked into the back corner of an alley (it was SOOO good!)

On Saturday morning, we had a huge traditional Irish breakfast, buffet style (go Holiday Inn!) then checked out and hit the road:

-Our first stop was Carrickfergus Castle, my mom's favorite castle and also a tiny little harbor town where some of my ancestors are from. The castle was itty bitty and very cute

-Then we took the coastal road up the east coast and stopped in at Glenariff, the most famous of the 9 Glens of Antrim. We took the 3km waterfall trail through the glen. It was so gorgeous. It felt very much like a rainforest but the air was cool and crisp. Everything was so green and the waterfalls were beautiful. The water had the most strange brown color to it. It wasn't mucky and thick brown like you would expect, it was clear and fresh looking, just a rusty color. We stopped in at the cafe afterwards and had yummy scones with butter. The views from the top of the glen, down into the valley and out to the ocean were indescribable. Seriously, I can't think of a word to describe how amazing the whole experience was. And to top it all off, as we were driving back to the coastal road, we saw the hugest rainbow in the history of the world. We drove for 5 minutes before we couldn't see it anymore. We practically drove right into it. Then when that one was gone, another one appeared. No pot of gold though. Bummer.

-Back in the car, we drove further up the coast to the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge which spans a chasm 23m deep and 20m wide. It goes out to a tiny fishing island. It was was the one thing Brent really wanted to do from the travel book. It was SO scary! I'm not afraid of heights but I am VERY afraid of falling. On the walk out to it and even while we were standing in line it didn't seem that bad but as soon as I set foot on it, I swear the thing doubled in length. I was going to stop and take some awesome pictures but it was all I could do to take one hand off the rail to take a picture without looking. Because of the rain, most of the island was roped off so we headed back. It was a little less nerve wracking but still scary. Gorgeous, but scary.

-Next we checked into our B&B for the night and got back in the car and drove the 3 miles to the Giant's Causeway. It's hard to pick one favorite thing from our trip but this is definitely in the top 3. I was really surprised at how open the whole place is. First of all I expected it to be smaller but even more surprising is that you can just go climb all over it. They have signs to warn you that you are probably headed out too close to the waves but no ropes, no safety gear, no workers telling you to come back. So we explored as close as we could and still feel safe. It was raining a bit and SO windy but we were careful and got some really great pictures and Brent even got some video.

-After that, we headed into the nearest town, Bushmills, to find some dinner and a grocery store to buy food for Sunday. As we were walking down the street, this parade appeared. We're not sure what it was but the first flag said something about Protestant Boys and the banner carried at the back said something about William Johnston Memorial.

On Sunday morning we had a most delicious breakfast cooked by the B&B owner. Seriously the best sausage we've ever had. The soda bread and potato bread were pretty great too. Then we packed up and got ready for church and headed out for the day.

-The first stop was to see the (almost completely disappearing) ruins of Dunseverick Castle. It has no important historical context behind it but it was cool looking nonetheless.

-We found the nearest meetinghouse to where we were staying, the Coleraine Branch. It was the nicest, cleanest, smallest church building we've ever seen. The ward members were so funny and SO very Irish. We hadn't noticed a difference in Irish and Norther Irish accents until we got to church. Their accents were hilarious. We just sat there and smiled for 3 hours. And since it's such a small branch, they all laugh and joke as f they are family. So. Fun. And they were really really welcoming to us. And as a side note, the Irish really do use the word "wee" a lot. Especially in conversation.

-After church, we set off to find the Dark Hedges which I had come across in my trip research. I couldn't find any solid info anywhere as to the exact location or even if it was more than a street with cool trees but we wanted to find it and luckily whoever had our rental car before us had left us a map. It was worth the time and the road detour to get there. It was really cool and could be really spooky if it were dark or foggy.

-Next we went to Dunluce Castle, C.S. Lewis' inspiration for Cair Paravel in the Narnia series. It was truly amazing. Because it was Sunday and because you could pretty much see the whole thing from outside of the paid gate, we didn't go inside. The best part was the view from the road a little way off.

-We continued on the scenic coastal drive that we had started the day before and stopped at the Mussenden Temple. I thought it was going to just be the building, on the edge of a cliff. It turns out it's a national park with ruins of the old mansion (Downhill House) and pretty much the whole original estate. It was gorgeous. Rolling green hills, a giant house right on the ocean...

-Back on the road, we drove to the city of Londonderry, the largest city on the north coast and the closest large city to the border with the Republic. We weren't sure what we were there to see other than the wall surrounding the city that is still standing from the 1600's. We couldn't find the wall because the city has gotten bigger (obviously) so we just drove around a bit and found a nice view from the top of the hill in the cemetery.

-By then it was getting late so we drove off to find our B&B for the next night. It was in Cookstown which is back towards the Belfast side so there was a couple of hours of driving but it was through the gorgeous Sperrin Mountains. I didn't get any pictures because it was foggy and the road was really winding and there were no shoulders so it wasn't safe to pull over but trust us, it was pretty. It had a very different feeling to it than the coastal mountains. They were more rolling than steep and they were covered in wild bushes with dark red and purple flowers.

On Monday we woke up and quickly got ready to leave (the lodging that night wasn't so great), had breakfast and got back in the car for more driving.

-The main stop for the day was the Ulster-American Folk Park which is a mostly outdoor museum that tells the story of emigration from Ireland to America. It was really cool. They had bought original homes and churches and stores, etc from the 17-1800's and relocated them to this 64 acre park. The first half was the "Old World" showing what life was like in Ireland and why they wanted to leave, then we got to the "town" and inside one of the buildings they had recreated a dock scene and we boarded the boat and exited on the other side which was the "New World". The town there was set up like Boston and then the path continued around going past original log cabins that they actually paid to have brought from Pennsylvania. The whole thing was really cool, especially since both Brent and I have ancestors who emigrated from that area of Ireland around that time.

-After the Folk Park, we had planned to drive to the southern part of N. Ireland to a town called Enniskillen to go to a cave there but since it had been raining so much the cave tour was cut down from 75 minutes to 20 and that was not worth the 1.5 hour drive to get there. Sad, but it meant that we now had the rest of the day to go on a Family History hunt. We had the names of some towns of Brent's ancestors and a few of mine so we used the GPS on our phones and got down to business.
-Brent's family (the Blackburn's) came from a town called Loughgall which is where we went first. It is still a small village centered around apple farming. The town was so adorable with potted plants hanging from the street lamps and apples adorning many of the signs. We found the 3 cemeteries in town. One was locked but we were able to explore the other 2. We didn't have any luck though because all of the headstones that were old enough to be his ancestors' were either unreadable or broken or both but we were able to find more recent headstone with other family names on them, really really distant relatives I would imagine. It was cool to be able to drive around and see the area. We were even able to find 2 of the roads mentioned on birth certificates. It is an incredible feeling to be in the spot where someone 200+ years ago stood who would later blaze the trail for our family's life and opportunities in America. It's a sort of reverence but also with joy and excitement. We felt like if we closed our eyes and held really still, we could jump back in time.

-Then it was off to Lisburn to see what we could find of my heritage. We know that one of my great (x 5) grandfathers, William Black, was one of the founders of Methodism in that part of Ireland and my mom and dad have told me about how when they went to Ireland in the 80's, they found the church. I wasn't ever able to get the specifics so we googled it and found the oldest Methodist church in the town (which was conveniently located in "old town") and hoped that was it. William Black's son, William Black and his wife Jane Johnston Black are the first members of the church from that side of my family and I am proud and a little intimidated to be one of their posterity. Those are big shoes to fill.

-After dinner in Lisburn, we headed off to our last B&B. We had seen on their website that there was some kind of ancient celtic stone nearby and thought we would check it out since we had like 15 more minutes of daylight. The B&B owner gave us a map and off we went. We found the little one lane country road and the sign but had a hard time finding the Holestone itself. The sign seemed to point to a cow pasture but there was a small trail on the other side of the road. I took to explore the trail and Brent looked in the field but neither of us found it. So we checked the field again, and there it was, tucked around the corner, on top of a hill. It was very silly but we decided to take part in the centuries old ritual and held hands through the hole in the stone to pledge our eternal love.

-Then back to the B&B for a few hours of sleep. We woke up really early in the morning and returned our rental car and flew home.

It was a really amazing holiday and I can't believe how much we were able to pack into 4 short days. It's been really fun to relive the whole experience while writing this post and I think this is going to be one of the top holidays we will ever go on. Please excuse my over use of the words gorgeous, really, cool, amazing, etc. I don't apologize because it was all of those things. And more, but I didn't want to sound like I wrote this post using a thesaurus. It was truly incredible.

Stats:
2 people
4 days
1 rental car
1 hotel
3 B&B's
340 miles of ground covered (including many winding, sometimes 1 lane roads)
11 hours of driving
2 GPS maps
1 printed google map
1 atlas
1 travel guide
3 castles
2 cameras
1,200+ pictures
4 days of rain
4 waterfalls (2 of them spotted randomly from the car whilst driving)
2 giant rainbows
green as far as the eye could see

Awesome.

*I'll post a link sometime in the near future to the online photo album in case any of you are interested in seeing the original pictures, not in collage form.*