{"id":9103,"date":"2024-08-18T13:33:04","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T11:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/?p=9103"},"modified":"2024-08-18T13:33:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-18T11:33:04","slug":"erin-go-bragh-north-belfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/08\/18\/erin-go-bragh-north-belfast\/","title":{"rendered":"ERIN GO BRAGH (NORTH) – BELFAST"},"content":{"rendered":"

We arrived quite late in Belfast, after spending most of the day traveling both by train and bus, and then walking about 15 minutes to our AirBnB, the only one that was ground floor with NO stairs. The next morning, we got up early, found a caf\u00e9 for breakfast and then met our bus for the day’s excursion. <\/p>\n

\"Eriu\"
\n\u00c9riu (today more commonly known as \u00c9ire) is the Irish name for Ireland \u2013 named after this powerful female goddess.<\/p>\n

\"bridge<\/p>\n

\"skinny
\nSkinny building along the canal in Belfast<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nWaiting for the bus<\/p>\n

Our guide was named Harry and despite his magnificent mustache, he was a bit of a disappointment after John B in Galway. He spent nearly 30 minutes telling us the entire history of Ireland from before Christ up to the 1970s but punctuated his speech with such weird exclamatory quirks that it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying. Then he stopped talking and put on music for most of the rest of the trip, not giving us any info really on anything we passed. <\/p>\n

We stopped first along the way to take photos of the ruins of Dunluce castle, and then arrived at Giant’s Causeway, one of my bucket list items. Once again, I was thrilled to discover there was a free shuttle service down to the causeway, which was great, because it was a LONG walk down (30 minutes) and a steep incline. The place was also packed with tourists, and we had sunshine and a stiff breeze, but it was really lovely, and so cool to wander around and explore the stones. There were a couple of park employees yelling at people to get down off the top of the ridge where there were loose stones, and I thought a sign might have been much more helpful than people screaming at tourists all day. <\/p>\n

Legend has it that an Irish giant named Finn McCool created a causeway to get across the Irish Sea to face his rival, the Scottish giant Benandonner. Following their fearsome meeting, Benandonner ripped up the causeway as he fled back to Scotland, leaving what you see nowadays. <\/p>\n

\"Dunluce
\nDunluce Castle<\/p>\n

\"Giant's<\/p>\n

\"Giant's<\/p>\n

\"Giant's<\/p>\n

\"Giant's<\/p>\n

\"Giant's<\/p>\n

\"Giant's<\/p>\n

\"Giant's<\/p>\n

We had not gotten any info about lunch being provided, or taken into consideration, and it turned out we were supposed to have packed a lunch, which we didn’t know. Our guide was singularly unhelpful about options, but I asked at the visitor center and the hotel next to it provides takeaway options, so we bought some ham and cheese tartlets with Guinness bread and butter (delicious!) and some water to take back on the bus. <\/p>\n

The sun was shining on us again at our next stop along the coast, where we had impressive views of Sheep Island, Carrick-a-Rede Island with its rope bridge, and all the way to Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre! Apparently it’s not often that you can see Scotland due to the mist, even though it’s so close. <\/p>\n

\"Irish<\/p>\n

\"Carrick-a-Rede\"
\nCarrick-a-Rede with a view of its rope bridge<\/p>\n

\"view\"
\nView of Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre<\/p>\n

Our final stop was at the Dark Hedges, a beautiful avenue of serpentine beech trees planted by the Stuart family in the 18th century as an impressive feature of the driveway to their Gracehill Manor. It was also a filming location for Game of Thrones<\/em>. They did some nice CGI work as the entire avenue is actually paved, and normally FULL of people walking its length.<\/p>\n

\"stay
\nRoadsign that made us laugh<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We got back in the late afternoon, and after a rest went for Italian for dinner in town. I thought Belfast was a very pretty city, with a nice mix of old and modern buildings. The next morning we visited Titanic Belfast, a huge museum dedicated to the story of the most famous maritime disaster in history. It was very thorough, taking you through the history of Belfast, its shipyards, the building and fitting of the Titanic, and the story of its sinking and aftermath. We had lunch in one of the restaurants and then stopped at the “Salmon of Knowledge” (otherwise known as the Big Fish) on the way to the bus station. Legend has it that kissing it on the lips imparts wisdom to you :I<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And so, back to Dublin for the night and one more day of exploring!<\/p>\n

Mood: happy
\nMusic: Roxy Music\u2014Oh Yeah!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We arrived quite late in Belfast, after spending most of the day traveling both by train and bus, and then walking about 15 minutes to our AirBnB, the only one that was ground floor with NO stairs. The next morning, we got up early, found a caf\u00e9 for breakfast and then met our bus for the day’s excursion. \u00c9riu (today more commonly known as \u00c9ire) is the Irish name for Ireland \u2013 named after this powerful female goddess. Skinny building along the canal in Belfast Waiting for the bus Our guide was named Harry and despite his magnificent mustache, he...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,14,27,7],"class_list":["post-9103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-americanabroad","tag-goodthings","tag-holidaze","tag-obiterphotos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9103"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9137,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103\/revisions\/9137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}