Well, I won't be posting this until at least tomorrow, but I should probably get it out whilst I still remember what the feck went on today. This morning we hopped on the bus and headed straight for Dunluce Castle. It's this really wicked castle basically built on top of an amazing rock island that you have to cross around a 20 foot wooden bridge to get to. It's a ruin of a castle but it's still amazingly beautiful and you can see why they put it where they did. It's supposed to be the most romantic castle in Ireland, but the guide reckons that's because they have a lot of marriage proposals happen there. An interesting story about it, is a couple hundred or more years ago, while the inhabitants were having a party, they heard a large crashing sound come from the kitchen. They all rushed there only to find that the kitchen was literally gone. The cliff underneath it had collapsed and it had literally fallen into the ocean, cooks, cutlery and all. A little freaky. Though the guide assured us that the ground underneath the castle has been stabilized many times over now. It's a pretty cool castle and the nice thing about it is that they let you crawl all over it, and go where you please (within reason). He even told us a story about the Irish banshee. It was this 16-year-old girl who had an affair with a soldier. Her parents weren't happy about this and had the soldier killed. She ran screaming to her room in one of the towers and tried to escape the castle via the bedsheet-out-the-window trick. Only she hadn't tied the sheets tight enough and fell to her death. Now she apparently haunts the castle, and every now and then you can hear her screaming as she runs into the tower. She also apparently shows up as a ghostly figure in some photos taken from a certain spot. Spooky.
Next stop was the Giant's Causeway, which I have to say is the coolest thing we've seen so far. Some geological event has caused a whole bunch of hexagonal basalt columns to form right on the coastline, making a weird sort of pavement and it's really cool to walk and crawl all over them. I got a book on how they were formed so if you really want to know ask me in a couple months, I should be an expert by then. Unless, of course, you believe the legends that it was the remains of a bridge built by a giant who wanted to go to Scotland to find a wife. I think that explanation suits me better. There's also a little hike you can do up and around the corner, which takes you to the amphitheater, which looks exactly like it sounds. It's a steep, bowl-shaped spot that I couldn't really capture on camera. But it was amazing to see. It also had some incredible views of the coastline and cliffs around the area.
The last stop before we ended up in Belfast was the rope bridge. It started out when the fishermen realized that the salmon always hung out on the far side of this one tall island. So instead of always having to get in their boats to fish, they built a rope bridge so they could fish right off the island. It's been improved and fixed a lot, but the idea's still there. Plus it's over a chasm that drops about 60 m, and the bridge sways pretty good when you're walking over it. You get some amazing views once you get to the island, so it's well worth the 3 pounds you pay to cross the bridge. I might add that the bridge is still actually made of rope, and only rope, with a few boards to walk on, so the whole rope bridge idea hasn't been torn completely to bits.
This evening we're calling Belfast home, and tomorrow it's back to Dublin, and then off to Scotland for another tour!
Well, I didn't get this posted for reasons that I can't quite remember, so I'll continue on from where I left off. The night in Belfast went all right. We were in a very large dorm room, though, and it ended up being co-ed, which is fine. Right up until you find out the showers and bathrooms are shared, and there are no locks on the shower stall doors. No, really, I'm not joking. You have to hang your towel over the door to show it's occupied. Classy.
The next morning we took a black cab tour of Belfast. It was really a political tour, but I'll get to that in a minute. A black cab, for those who haven't seen one, is about the size of a Honda Fit, only a little taller for more head room. They seat 7 passengers and a driver. Seriously. There are 3 across the back, 3 flip-up seats facing the rear behind the front seats, and one more passenger seat up front. You might be squished in like sardines but you all fit. The tour itself was an explanation of the violence and political unrest in northern Ireland in the past, what happened in the past, and what's going on now. So I'll give you my personal cliff notes. This is what I've pieced together from what we were told by our guide, several other guides and the taxi drivers that morning. It may or may not be correct, but this is how I understand it.
Way back a few hundred years ago, there was a dispute in Ireland as to who actually had rule over the island. So the 2 sides went to England and asked them to settle the dispute. This caused England to claim that Ireland was really part of their territory, and they promptly decided to take over. Somehow, at some point, they reached an agreement that England would get rule over 6 counties in the north, and the Republic of Ireland would be formed in the south. This is where it gets confusing, because it started as a political thing and then ended up as a religious problem. At the time, most of Ireland, it seems, was catholic. Then England started shipping protestants over to the 6 counties they had control over and gave the protestants all the power and land and jobs, leaving the Catholics with very little. Thus, chaos ensued. The Catholics (the Republicans and the political party Sinn Fein if that rings a bell) want all of Ireland to be united, but the protestants (the Loyalists, who are loyal to the crown) still want England to have rule over northern Ireland, because the protestant population was led to believe that the Catholics would run the country if they let the Republic of Ireland take over. That, by the way, is the reason northern Ireland uses the monetary pound. This isn't really the case anymore, as religious equality is getting much better and the positions of power are equalizing.
That said, there is currently, what the locals call “peace” in Belfast. This is not what you'd expect peace to be if you're from Canada or any country where you're free to roam wherever you like and free to have whatever religious and political affiliations you want. Belfast is, almost literally, a divided city. There is a wall separating the catholic population from the protestant population. A literal wall. I have a picture of it. The cab drivers call it the peace wall. But it's a necessary evil. They've even had to build the fence up taller because of the bombs and debris that were being thrown over the wall. The houses right up against the wall on the catholic side literally have cages around their backyards because of the amount of times their homes were damaged from stuff being thrown over the wall. The wall also has gates. They're closed at 6:30 at night and opened at 6 the next morning. The gates are closed on weekends. And after thinking about it, I still don't understand how they can call it peace when there's a physical wall dividing them, but I do believe it's better this way. No one's dying, no one's terrified they'll be bombed in their home at night for what they believe. It's a peace of sorts. The protestant side of the wall has been graffitied with messages from people around the world wishing peace and love for Belfast and north Ireland. It's still gonna be along time.
The driver told us that over 60% of the people from one side of the wall have never had a conversation with someone from the other side of the wall. He had a 14 year old son, and someone asked him what he thought of his son never speaking to someone from the other side. He said it saddened him, but at the same time, he didn't want to tell his son to go out and make friends with people from the other side, because it's still not totally safe. He'd rather his son come home safe at night than have him mingling with the other side. So it's perpetuating itself. It's a really heartbreaking situation and standing on a street that could be a street anywhere in the world and hearing that in this day and age the people on either side of that tiny slab of concrete just couldn't cooperate with each other. And standing there hearing someone talk about it with a little twinge in their voice when you ask them a question almost brings you to tears. And I don't cry easily.
But enough of the serious stuff. After we left Belfast we stopped for lunch and were supposed to continue on to a photo op spot with some Celtic crosses. This didn't happen because our bus ended up with a flat tire, and we had to wait for the tire repair guy. But once that was done we just headed straight for Dublin, since we were running low on time and one girl had a plane to catch.
We stayed in the same hostel we had before in Dublin, but were very disappointed when we found out we couldn't get our clothes washed there. We were both out of clean clothes and getting dangerously low on clean underpants. But we managed to wait one more day. We had a plane to catch at just before 7 this morning, so we were out of bed at 4 and catching a bus to the airport. Then it was off to Scotland!
It was too early to get our room at the hostel, but they were kind enough to let us use their laundry facilities. Ahhh, clean jeans. There is no sweeter a feeling. Once our stuff was clean and dry we headed off to catch a hop on-hop off bus tour of the city. We hopped off when we got to the stop for Edinburgh Castle and headed up to see the castle. I hate to say it, but it was a castle. After about 5 or 6 of them, they really all start to look and feel the same. But we did get to see the crown jewels of Scotland, so that was cool. When we left the castle we walked down what's known as the Royal Mile. It's a hoarde of old, historic houses along the same street leading away from the castle. And it's the mecca of kitsch shops. Glen is definitely getting a kilt. It's just a question of color now.
After we hopped back on the bus and finished the bus tour, I went up the 287 steps to get to the top of the Scott Monument. It's this wonderfully huge, gothic looking structure in the middle of town devoted to Sir Walter Scott, one of Scotland's famous writers. The thing is just massive, and it's all curls and stonework. It's really cool lookin'. It's even cooler inside, as long as you don't get claustrophobic. The stairs in this thing put the stairs in all the other spots I've been in so far to shame. The stairs at some points are so narrow I literally had to go sideways, and duck my head so I didn't smash it on the ceiling. Now throw in some people trying to come down as you're going up, and you'll get how squishy it was. At one point near the top I thought we were all going to get physically stuck inside the thing. Or that someone was going to lose it inside the stairwell. But I made it out alive, and it was totally worth it for the views of the city. Oh, and it gets wicked windy up there. Windy enough I was afraid of losing my hat, or the bag of souvenirs I was carrying. Windy enough to be glad there were railings to keep me from getting blown off. It was awesome.
Tomorrow it's more sightseeing and then first thing Monday morning we're off on a wild and sexy Haggis tour of Scotland. I'm not sure when you'll hear from me next, as free WiFi seems to be getting a little scarce (hence the lack of pictures in today's post), but I'll do my best.
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