Day Trip: Giant's Causeway

One of these months I'll stop posting about my time in Ireland. But, that time has not yet come! You'll have to bear with me for a while yet trying to finish all the posts that I have planned :)

As I talked about in this post, in Ireland I got a lot better at doing things on my own. My final day trip in Ireland was to Giant's Causeway, and I ended up going alone because all of my friends had either been there already or weren't available. I went on a lot of bus trips similar to this one in Ireland, Scotland and England. They were always great, because they bring you to places where you wouldn't otherwise have visited (and you don't have to figure out transportation yourself). On the other hand, they can be frustrating because they are often more expensive than transporting yourself and you have no say in how long you spend at each location. On this particular trip I wished we had more time at a couple of the main sights. I am still a fan of bus tours in general, though, and Ireland is a great place to do day trips due to its relatively small size. I was able to see many parts of the country that I never would have made it to on my own, without having to spend money on hostels. I wanted to share about this particular trip as an example. (If I can remember what happened, that is! It's been awhile. Good thing I take an excessive amount of pictures.)

Giant's Causeway was one of the main sites that I wanted to visit the whole time that I was in Ireland. It's a natural volcanic rock formation in Northern Ireland where there are hundreds of hexagonal rock pillars. The bus tour that I chose went to The Dark Hedges, The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle, and Belfast. Here is the story of my day in pictures!

Stop 1:
The day started with a short stop at The Dark Hedges, a dramatic tree-lined road (recently famous for being a filming location for Game of Thrones, that's kind of a theme in Northern Ireland! The main studio is in Belfast). These pictures really don't do it justice, you should look up other pictures of The Dark Hedges in County Antrim, it's especially beautiful once the leaves come in. The trees were originally planted along the road leading to a big mansion to impress visitors.

One theme of travelling by myself is lots and lots of selfies! I don't always feel like asking somebody else to take a picture of me at every location.

Stop 2:
Our next stop was right on the coast to see something called the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. The Irish coastline is stunning!

Here is the rope bridge itself. Unfortunately it was too windy that day, so we weren't allowed to cross the bridge (when I saw how much it was bouncing up and down, I was actually okay with that). The bridge was built to give fishermen easy access to the little island. Apparently there's good fishing over there?

Stop 3:
Finally we arrived at the main attraction of the day, Giant's Causeway. This is the start of the path that went down to the site. I could've taken a bus, but decided to walk. There were beautiful views along the way, too!

In May, Northern Ireland is covered in gorse, these yellow shrubs. They were all over the place, and I loved the contrast between the yellow flowers and the green and blue of the fields and water. This is still walking down the path to the site.

Giant's Causeway was one of my favorite places that I saw in Ireland, I'm so glad that I made time to go. It's not as big or as grand as some places, like the Cliffs of Moher, but its such an unusual formation that its even more surreal. It felt like a big playground to me.

Obviously, there were quite a few other people there!

More selfies! And yes, it was cold enough in May to require the hat and scarf. The weather was actually quite miserable that day.

It looks completely manmade! All these rocks were shaped naturally.

Especially when I'm by myself, I like to get a little more creative with my pictures. These are my trusty tennis shoes that I wore for all my travelling (and promptly had to throw away when I got home!)

And, of course, Jet. He was my companion through most of my travels.

Stop 4:

Too soon, we moved on from Giant's Causeway and continued on our journey. This isn't a great picture, but we quickly stopped by Dunluce Castle, a castle ruin right by the water. It has an interesting history. Due to its location at the edge of a cliff, one night part of the kitchen fell into the water, killing many of the servants. (Lesson: don't build your castle on the edge of a cliff that might erode.)

Stop 5:
At the end of the day we stopped in Belfast for about an hour. I wasn't really in the mood for much exploring after a long day, and it was still rainy and cold. So, I stopped by a souvenir shop and a bookshop and got some hot tea. This is the town hall that we parked next to, it was about the only site I saw there.

Another picture of town hall from inside the bus, this kind of sums up the day! Very wet.

I hope these posts aren't getting old or repetitive. I'm still enjoying reminiscing on my travels, so I'm going to continue for now! More to come soon.