Day 99: Giant's Causeway & Antrim Coast

The research into bus and train times didn't look good >_< So, we ended up taking a day tour up the Antrim Coast and to the Causeway. With the bus and train times as they were, we actually would have only been able to spend as much time at the Causeway as we did with the day tour! K said the tour spent enough time at the Causeway for him. I would have liked more time there, but I'm the type that likes to linger ^-^;; In retrospect, maybe we could have rented a car (which we have yet to do during any of our travels). Then, at least we wouldn't have the extra other day tour stops like the Bushmills Distillery (whiskey), the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge (though that was fun), and a couple of other much shorter stops.


The *best* bread I've had this whole trip: wheaten bread! The texture and flavor remind me a bit of cornbread. It was sooooo good. We (mostly I) ate the whole loaf before our day tour ended.

I definitely got my day's fill of sheep (so much pasture for them, too!) and beautiful Irish coastline!


The naturally-formed hexagonal stones at the Giant's Causeway were just as strangely-cool as I imagined they'd be. These were even better than the similar formations we saw at Jusangjeolli in Jeju-do last year because we actually to go right up next to (and on!) the rocks ^o^

We used up every minute of our time at the Causeway, making the last shuttle back to the parking lot in time to make our on-time tour bus departure ^-^

With a bit of traffic, the bus ended up getting back into Belfast later than the previously-stated time of 7pm. In fact, it got back to two blocks from the hostel a few minutes before 7:30pm, which is when we had to catch our bus to Dublin! It might have been the fastest I've ever had to run in my life, getting off that bus, sprinting to the hostel, grabbing our stuff, and racing down many more blocks to the airport bus stop. Thankfully, we made it *just* in time!

There were only two other people on the bus, a young couple from Florida who were only a few weeks into their six-month trip! It was definitely exciting talking to them about where they were planning to go, some of which overlapped with the places we'd been. Their trip would take them through Western Europe, Central Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, and Nepal. Wow.

Day 98: Zurich => Belfast

This morning... booked our rooms for tonight and tomorrow night ^-^;;

4:10pm flight to Dublin. Our plane was almost 2 hrs late >_<

I forgot to buy any souvenirs! This says how 'used to' everything I've gotten. We don't usually buy any non-consumable souvenirs, well, K likes to buy *something*, but I always convince him there's no point. I do like to buy some sort of consumable for friends (and for myself ^_~), but it was after I got to the airport that I realized I've gotten so used to moving around from one location to the next that I 'forgot' this is basically the end! Oops. K did observe that anything I could get in Switzerland I could probably get in the States!

We're going to have a full day at the end in Ireland? Can we squeeze in a trip to Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland for that day? Hmmm...

... which is how we ended up on a 2.5-hour bus ride up to Belfast after we got off our flight in Dublin. The buses between Dublin airport and Belfast are actually quite convenient; they run every hour between 7am and 9pm.

With our flight being late, it was already after 11pm by the time we got to the hostel, and we still had to do some more research for the train and bus times to get to Giant's Causeway tomorrow. Also, we had a very filling, yummy late-night dinner. Yes, there are actually places open late in Belfast ^-^ Unfortunately, we couldn't take the leftovers to go because we had nowhere to store them; I hate wasting food like that >_<