Portrush & The Giants Causway

On the cliffs above the Giants Causeway

So begins the long weekend trip w/ Brayden's parents to Northern Ireland! Mr & Mrs B (Ted & Sheila) arrived Friday afternoon and are in town for 17 days! good for them right! I was able to get Monday off from work so the 4 us planned at trip up to the North. Their agenda is to then tour around the rest of Ireland and then come back to see us and Dublin at the end. It looks like we might also meet up this wknd for a bball tourney in Limmerick but we shall see.

Anyways so Friday after work we pack into a rental car and head off to Portrush, beginning an interesting driving experience for 2 reasons. One being the fact that Ted is 6'5" and Brayden is 6'11" thus we are all crammed to smigens in the European style car. The other being the fact that driving in Ireland is quite tricky due to the very narrow roads and left-side driving (this will play in later...). We stopped for din on the way and got up there to our lil B&B on the ocean around 11pm.

This used to stretch all the way to Scotland!

Saturday was a very eventful day! Portrush is adorable and has a great deal to offer, but the main attraction is the beautiful Antrim Coast which is home to the Giant's Causeway. The GC is a bunch of basalt columns that are shaped like hexagons and form an ancient link from the coastline, under the ocean, which used to connect like a bridge to Scotland! There is a cool old legend about how it came to be. I think it's like there was a giant warrior named Finn MacCool who built the bridge to fight his giant counterpart in Scotland for whom he was fighting over a girl-giant. Drama. Anyways it's a World Heritage Site and quite impressive! We were lucky enough to have bright blue skies and sunshine while hiking around the GC coast, until... the weather changed as it always does in Ireland... and we got caught in torrential downpour! Like torrential. Like we jumped in the ocean in our clothes wet. So we got in the car and proceeded back to the B&B to change clothes. Now recall the narrow roads and tricky driving... Ted accidentally brushes a curb on the way home. No big deal, I do it all the time. But we get a flat! It was actually pretty funny and luckily the people at the B&B helped us out since it was Saturday and no tire stores were open. Good Irish people.

So a bit later shall we say decided to try our luck over at the Bushmills Distillery. Most people think of Jameson as the famous Irish Whiskey (that distillery is literally like 3 blocks from our apt in Dublin) but Bushmills is the other famous beverage of the Irish. I wasn't too too overly excited about the tour but it ended up being really cool! I don't know how the Irish came up with such a complicated process but I'm guessing lots of taste testing along the way. Their logo is "making Irish Whiskey legally since 1608."

Dunluce Castle

Next we stopped at the awesome old ruins of a castle on a cliff, Dunluce Castle. It was really cool and the history there is that the owners finally decided to move out after the kitchen fell off into the ocean during a dinner party one night. Brayden took a particular liking to the 'Wee Cottage' next to the castle. One of the many things we quickly learned in Northern Ireland is their affinity for the word "wee" meaning little. For example, Brayden is not wee.

Wee!

Later we went to dinner at this really good (and trendy!) restaurant called 'The Bistro' in the harbour. I guess I did forget that it was Saturday night but I was quite surprised at how done up all the locals were. I didn't let my touristy jeans/sneakers/fleece caught-in-the-rain hair look interfere with the great food and company. Anyways it was a very exciting and eventful day.

After passing over the rope bridge.

Sunday we got an early start and headed over the famous Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. The weather turned stormy and it was very windy and ominous. Maybe it was the weather, not the shear drop below the narrow bridge, but a certain 7-footer was scared to dealth of the little rope bridge. Notice in the picture how I stop and pose for a pic while Mr. "My-center-of-gravity-is- a-lot-higher-than-yours" runs awkwardly to the other side (you can click the photo for further enhancement)... ok I guess the handrails were a bit low for him, but still!

Alisa bravely posing while Brayden scurries across!

Next we headed over to a wee pitch and putt (3 par) golf course. It was a great and really inexpensive course next to the beach, just lovely! While I have very minimal golf experience we all proved to be less than Irish expert golfers. There may have been two or three pars (1 for me!) but lets just say we all golfed about as well Mr. B drives (joke!). Then we had a nice lunch by the beach and headed over to Derry...

Weed-whacking or golfing? You decide.