Ireland: Day 1

After Scotland, I flew down to meet Sarah (my sister!) at Kentwell Manor near Long Melford, England, where she was working on a Tudor-era reenactment that happens there every year. If you haven’t heard of any of those places don’t worry, they’re about the size of your left thumbnail, and all you need to know is that they’re not too far from the London Stansted airport. Sarah had done London last summer on her honeymoon, so we decided to grab the cheapest Ryanair flight out of Stansted. We went to Ireland!

Kentwell Hall

 

Sarah hard at work Sunday

 

Once we got there, we hopped in our mercifully tiny rental car and headed north. I was driving since Sarah isn’t a huge fan of manual transmissions, and the car I’d had in England to pick her up was almost SUV-sized, which was no fun while I was getting used to driving on the left, being on the wrong side of the car, and shifting with my left hand! It was much easier to navigate very narrow country roads in something more suited to size.

Our first stop was Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland, like Scotland, is part of the UK along with England. England and Scotland are both on the island of Great Britain, so they’re both considered British (to varying degrees—Scots are basically just Scottish as far as they’re concerned), while only people in England are English and everybody is part of the UK. The southern part of Ireland—most of the island—is the Republic of Ireland, which is independent and part of the EU. So there.

  Belfast city hall

In Belfast we checked out the city and had lunch and tea. One thing I really loved about being in the UK/Ireland was that I could indulge my desire for a pot of tea at basically every meal, and I did! Belfast has a rough history as the site of a lot of sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants, and between the British and Irish revolutionaries. It’s peaceful now, but you can still see the seams. The city is also known for shipbuilding, and built the Titanic and her two sister ships. They just opened an exhibit on that that’s supposed to be pretty cool.

After Belfast, we headed even farther north and out of civilization to the very northernmost coast, towards the Giant’s Causeway. The drive was unbelievably beautiful, with green hills ending in cliffs above the sea, and tiny seaswept towns every so often along the coast. We really enjoyed the ride.

  

Crazy beautiful

 

The Giant’s Causeway is an area with crazy polygonal rock columns, formed in a pool of lava that cooled slowly and allowed the rock to crystallize. The local legend is that two rival giants in Ireland and Scotland had built it so that they could duel each other, but when the Scottish giant came over the Irish giant realized he was much bigger and ran home in fear. His wife disguised him as an infant, and when the Scottish giant arrived at their house she pretended that he was their son and the giant was away. Seeing the size of the “baby,” the Scottish giant estimated how big his father must be and ran away, smashing the bridge as he went. The remaining pillars form the causeway as it is now.

They're like this naturally!

Another view of the Causeway

People have been coming to visit the causeway for a very long time, and there was a lot of history about the people who lived and worked there as tour guides a few hundred years ago. One castle—that we’ll get to later—even used some of the stones as building blocks since they’re so geometrically shaped.

  

Sarah!

 

Me!

  

Another formation in the area is the Giant’s Organ, made up of exposed columns of rock high in the cliffs. You can get a sense of how giant everything is—and how far it might extend both into the ground beneath and throughout the hills in the area—from looking at it. It was really helpful having Sarah—the science teacher—along to explain everything!

  

Do you see Sarah? It's enormous!

 

After the Giant’s Causeway it was getting late, so we got directions to a grocery store from very nice locals and munched in the car on the way to our hostel. We got a tiny bit lost—although Sarah should still get a medal for navigating us everywhere on one sub-par map—but eventually found our hostel in a barn at the edge of a forest in rolling hills. Both of us were reminded of Alaska, which was surprising but not too unrealistic given that we were very far north.

  Beautiful Irish countryside!

 

There weren’t many people staying at the hostel—it was a Monday—but all of the three staff and three guests sat around the big kitchen table drinking tea or beers and telling stories until it was very late. I think that was the most Irish experience we had—we all took turns telling stories, both personal and traditional folk tales, and singing songs until we basically fell asleep at the table. I loved the traditional Irish stories I learned, and the stories that everyone told from their own lives were alternately funny and philosophical.

 Love Katie