Ireland trip
Apr. 30th, 2005 02:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieDays 1 & 2: Sligo
After arriving in Belfast, we quickly made our way (in a bus that I would come to hate) to County Sligo, via a place called Castle Coole. Said "castle" dashed my hopes by not being the Coole of Yeatsian works, but I suppose it was somewhat pretty nonetheless. We had a very nice tour guide, anyway.
The place in Sligo where we stayed was undoubtedly the best lodging of the trip. Ellen, Whitney and I had a little cottage (bedroom, common room--with fireplace--kitchen and bathroom) all to ourselves. The whole B&B was about eight miles from the nearest town, the smallish one of Drumcliffe, so it was a bit like being back in Gambier. Except that a.) there wasn't a bookstore, etc. (there was, in fact, nothing but trees, cows, and a couple other B&Bs all around) and b.) Gambier is nowhere near the sea. Here, we were maybe three minutes' walk from a beautiful little bay that also, if you walked far enough, had beach facing the Atlantic. We took walks both nights ("night" being a somewhat arbitrary term, as the sun didn't really set until after 9:30 PM), a much longer one on the second night. We had a fun little surprise waiting for us when we got back the first night in the form of a little black hobo cat yowling piteously outside the bedroom window. Naturally, Ellen and I had to entice it inside with a little ham leftover from my pizza. I mean, naturally. And then we had to cuddle it and pet it and feed it milk for over an hour in the kitchen. Of course. Despite the fact that she was a very well-fed cat. Kitty was absolutely obsessed with doing that kneading thing cats do with their claws on every available surface, and doing it quite deeply, too, so kitty kept getting shifted around between us all. Eventually, we put kitty out the window, from whence she probably went off to make the rounds of all the other cottages. Betcha.
We saw Yeats' grave the next day, and Innisfree (from across a lake, sadly) and another old castle-like building that wasn't really a castle. Plus a bit of Sligo Town, too. The best part of the day--perhaps of the whole trip--was the walk we took along the beach. And by walk, I mean more like "6 mile-roundtrip hike," but anyway. We started around 7:30 or so, and got back at not quite 11. There was some kind of ruin on this peninsula we could just barely see from where the path from the B&B lets out onto the beach, and we went all the way there. So we totally had our own Wordsworthian moment, except instead of Tintern Abbey this was some less-interesting sort of old ruined structure. And we played hide-and-seek in the ruins, instead of writing poems about them. But anyway.
We walked back under the light from a crescent moon that was bright enough to give us shadows on the sand. There were more stars than I've ever seen anywhere except out in the country in Arizona.
When we got back, we had a peat fire in our little fireplace in hopes of warming the place up. The attempt failed, but we did get the cat back in, and Matz and Bowman came by for a while. We had a very ghetto version of s'mores in the form of marshmallow tea cakes which the peat made taste faintly of barbeque. Er, yes.
Day 3: Connemara
I'm officially hating the bus by this day. Ridiculously long time to get anywhere in this country. Grrr. Anyway, we went from Sligo to Galway via Kylemore Abbey, which, when I first glimpsed it as we were driving down the road, my first thought was "I so have this on a poster!" Other than that...well, not so interesting. It's very pretty outside, but there's not much to see inside. The Victorian walled garden is rather nice, though.
We got to Galway around dinnertime, and I think the first thing all of us think as we're walking down the main street in search of food is, "Wow, the Irish sound like Americans." Undoubtedly part of that is the fact that we've been listening to various non-rhotic English accents for the past six months, but the other part is that they actually pronounce their "r"s. What country am I in, again?
We had a ridiculously good uber-Irish dinner at this traditional restaurant that was very small and cute. I had some kind of seafood chowder with a big bunch of soda bread (OMG SO GOOD) and some potatoes. We tried to find some traditional Irish music in various pubs, but failed for various reasons (mostly that we wanted to get to bed early and didn't want to squeeze into really crowded pubs). We did run across some kind of performance art drum band thing in the high street as we were going back to our hotel, though, so there's something.
Day 4: The Cliffs of Moher
Well, this outing was a little rainy. And by "a little rainy," I mean non-stop drenching. There was still too much bus involved, but at least the bus was dry. Anyway, we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which weren't nearly as cool as I expected. Probably some of that was because of the rain, but...yeah, there's some steep cliffs going down into the sea, but the total length of the path you can walk down doesn't exceed a third of a mile, which is sad. Okay, we could've been like the random people who vaulted over the "UNSTABLE CLIFFS, DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE" barrier, but I rather like all my limbs attached, so no.
We stopped in a little town called Doolin for lunch and leg-stretching on the way back. We had more fantastic pub food, and wandered around the (very small) town for a while.
Part of the purpose of this little excursion was to see "The Burren," a very Dartmoor-like land of rocky mountains and tufty grass. The rain made it especially miserable-looking, and I was miserable because we had to be on the bus. (I think bus touring is my least favorite form of travel, if for no other reason than you can't take good pictures from a moving vehicle!)
Day 5: Galway to Dublin via Glendalough
Again with the way too much bus. The upside was that we drove through Ireland's horse country, which looked exactly like Williamson County (right south of Nashville), which is part of Tennessee's horse country (which consists of basically every county around Nashville and then some, but anyway). So that was nice. Parts of the Wicklow Mountains also look very Smoky-ish.
We made one stop, and that was at the ancient monastic settlement of Glendalough. We saw one of those round towers Ireland is famous for--they were bell towers that could be seen/heard for miles around. We had a nice hike/run up to the bigger of the two loughs from which the settlement gets its name, and there were pretty pictures there. Not so pretty was the utterly random bout of serious golf-ball-sized hail that came down for about five minutes right after we reached the lake. Still dunno what that was all about.
Days 6 & 7: Dublin Dublin has apparently been invaded by aliens. That giant lighted spire in the middle of O'Connell Street must function as some sort of homing device, and the matching ones on one of the bridges over the Liffey have to have some kind of similar function. Also, the "walk" sounds for the blind people sound alternately like a bomb about to go off or a ray gun. I kid you not.
Anyway. We had two days to do as we pleased in Dublin. We started off with the Book of Kells, which was fascinating. They have a nicely-done exhibit on the making of illuminated manuscripts and some of the more common symbolism used in the illuminations before you get to the room with the actual Book of Kells (and the Book of Durrow, as well). And then you get to walk through the Trinity College library, which is huge and old and lovely, and I am SO ANNOYED that you can't take pictures. Seriously, it's got kind of an open balcony sort of design, with a big arched ceiling, and bookshelves way taller than me on both floors, complete with rolly ladders to get to them. See the following pictures: 1, 2 (b&w, but grand), 3 (more detailed). I did have a little fun at the gift shop; I got a Dover Thrift anthology of Irish poetry, and a poster based on the poem "Pangur Ban." The poem was written in the margins of a copy of Virgil (I think) by a ninth-century Irish scribe-monk about his cat, Pangur Ban. It's a very sweet poem; the prettiest, although not necessarily most accurate, translation is here. The poster I got can be found in ridiculously huge size here. Lest you think the illuminations are from several centuries ago, note the "illuminated" cat playing Pac-Man at the bottom. ;)
We headed down Grafton Street afterwards. Grafton Street is a bit like Exeter's High Street, only much busier and way cooler. There were street performers out in force, and I don't mean just singers and guitarists--there was a harpist, and a guy with a grand piano. Now that takes dedication. We got to St. Stephen's Green eventually, and it was so pretty that I went back the next day by myself. The "Green" is actually more of a park, and it kind of reminds me of Centennial Park in Nashville, just a bit--both have a very nineteenth century air about them. This one had a lot of Victorian-looking flower beds (or at any rate, they were laid out much like the walled garden at Kylemore, so they're Victorian as far as I'm concerned ;)), a large pond in the middle of things, and hundreds of cherry trees in full bloom, littering the paths with pink petals. We picked a few blossoms with which to decorate ourselves; mine fell off my bag almost immediately, but Stewart's stayed in one of the buttonholes of his jacket all day.
What else did I see in Dublin...we went to an archaeology museum that I thought would be interesting, but sadly was not. (The gift shop was fun, though; I got a book of three Irish legends in English and Irish Gaelic, wheee!) We did pass by the Oscar Wilde statue in Merrion Square, though, which was entertaining. Until I upload the picture, I'll give you the hint that it was commissioned by Guinness as a clue to why it was so amusing. ;)
On Wednesday, I managed to get lost several times before finally running across St. Patrick's Cathedral. (When the aliens take over, I hope they make sense of the INSANE roads in that city!) Lots of neat stuff there, although it was smaller than I expected. It has the prettiest floor tiles of any cathedral I've been in, though; they had several with some kind of knotwork on them. You could also see Jonathan Swift's...um...what's that thing where the religious people stand to address the congregation in Anglican churches? Is it still called a pulpit, or does it have some other name? Anyway, they had that there, and you could also see Swift's grave, as well as that of his best friend Esther "Stella" Johnson, who was buried alongside him, which I thought was rather sweet. (Okay, so various internet sources say they were perhaps secretly married. Either way, it's nice.)
If you're ever in Dublin, go eat at the Queen of Tarts; they have fantastic, well, tarts, and some good chocolate cake besides. Mmmm. Also, go to Half Moon Crepes and get their Nutella/marshmallow/vanilla ice cream one, because it is delicious. We had such good food in Dublin.
Day 8: Trim, Newgrange, and arrival in Belfast
We made our way north via the Norman castle at Trim and the passage tomb at Newgrange. Trim was...like every other Norman castle, really. I'm getting tired of the Norman ones; let's have another ethnicity, people! Anyway, it's famous because it was used in Braveheart (which was kind of set in Scotland...but anyway...), but that's it's only distinguishing feature, as far as I'm concerned. It does sit in a rather pretty river valley--the Boyne River (yes, as in "Battle of") forms a marshy sort of half-moat around it today.
A little further up the river is Newgrange. Now that was cool. Again with no pictures inside, though. And I so wanted to document the awesome recreation of the winter solstice illumination they have, too. (There's a window over the door that lets the winter dawn sunlight into the otherwise completely dark inner chamber for approximately five days in December, similar to the sunlight tricks at Stonehenge and other megalithic sites.) The various carved rocks, with all those triskelion spirals, were fun, too.
We arrived in Belfast to an abundance of puns. We ate at a restaurant called "Thai Tanic" (even funnier when you remember Belfast is where they built the Titanic). A produce-delivery van painted with the slogan "Lettuce Deliver" passed by as we were waiting for a light to change. I'm sure there were more; there were more all over Ireland, really. I suppose one can expect nothing else from the people who invented the limerick.
We also arrived to an abundance of bells. We were staying on the south side of the city, and there were about three churches within shouting distance, and all of them found some occasion to ring their bells pretty much solid for a couple hours Thursday evening. No idea why. Speaking of churches--Belfast, obviously, has a bunch. This, combined with the large hills that ring the city picturesquely and the fact that it's not exactly a walking city, nor is there a whole lot for a tourist to see and do, brought me to the conclusion that Belfast = Nashville. Well, Nashville doesn't have the history of intercine violence, but you see my point. It's kind of scary. I can see why the Scots-Irish and other people from that area of Ireland picked TN and KY and other such states to settle in; geographically, they are remarkably similar. Belfast looks quite a bit like home.
Days 9 & 10: Belfast and environs
We started our first morning in Belfast with a walk around the Botanic Gardens, which were absolutely lovely. Lots of color everywhere. They have a Tropical Ravine dating from 1870-something; it's housed in a large brick building, and you walk all around what is essentially one large room by way of a balcony that rings the thing. Down below are oversized ferns, palm trees, banana trees, etc.; hanging in front of you are vines and pots of various stuff. It's very Jurassic Park. There's also a greenhouse that was built in the same era as London's Crystal Palace, so it's lovely as a structure by itself, but it also has marvelously-colored plants all over inside it. They have a rose garden, but of course it wasn't blooming yet in April. It looked like it would be pretty in June, though.
We didn't do much the rest of the day besides wander downtown a bit. We had to get up early the next day anyway, because we took one of those black cab tours out to the Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which are a couple hours outside Belfast on the Antrim coast.
The Causeway is really incredible. It's this collection of hexagonal stones that was formed by lava, I think, and it reaches out into the sea a few hundred yards. Legend has it that Finn MacCool, an Irish giant, wanted to go over and fight this Scottish giant whose name I forget. So he built this causeway for himself over to the western coast of Scotland (which, coincidentally, is the only other place in the world where stone like this is found) and went to find the giant. Well, he found him, and he saw that this giant was freaking huge--way bigger than he wanted to fight. So he hightailed it back home, Scottish giant on his heels, and went crying to his wife to save him. His wife dressed Finn MacCool up in baby clothes and put him in a cradle (don't ask). When the Scottish giant came knocking and asked for Finn MacCool, she said he was out, but for some reason showed him the "baby." The Scottish giant took one look at the "baby" and thought to himself, "If the kid's that big, the father must be frelling HUGE!" So he ran back to Scotland, destroying the causeway as he did so.
I rather like that version, myself.
The rope bridge was...well, there was a nice walk there over some chalk cliffs. When we got to the bridge, which is very much made of rope and very fragile-looking, and oh, yes, suspended quite a ways over ocean and rocks, I decided that my life would be complete if I gave crossing it a miss and stayed on the mainland. The bridge goes out to an island where the salmon fishing is apparently better than on the mainland; fisherman have been stringing it every season for centuries, and apparently it used to be far less safe than it is now.
Our driver was a great guy who knew all about the politics of Northern Ireland, or at least seemed to; we'd wanted to combine the Giant's Causeway with the political/mural tour of some of the suburban neighborhoods of Belfast, but weren't able to because of time constraints. Still, he gave us a taste of the political tour; we drove by one Republican mural, and he definitely talked for a couple hours about the whole history of the Troubles. We got to talking about the Irish immigrants to America (we always seem to talk about the US to people we meet over here), and he gave us an etymology of "hillbilly" as "person living in the Appalachians whose name is William (Billy); an Ulster Irishman." The OED doesn't support this theory, but it's fun anyway.
After we got back to Belfast, we got on a plane and flew back to Bristol, then had a bus back to Exeter. Had one day off, then class again. And that was my Irish adventure. Pictures coming soon! (I swear, I'll be more entertaining than this in the captions. Well, I hope, anyway.)
After arriving in Belfast, we quickly made our way (in a bus that I would come to hate) to County Sligo, via a place called Castle Coole. Said "castle" dashed my hopes by not being the Coole of Yeatsian works, but I suppose it was somewhat pretty nonetheless. We had a very nice tour guide, anyway.
The place in Sligo where we stayed was undoubtedly the best lodging of the trip. Ellen, Whitney and I had a little cottage (bedroom, common room--with fireplace--kitchen and bathroom) all to ourselves. The whole B&B was about eight miles from the nearest town, the smallish one of Drumcliffe, so it was a bit like being back in Gambier. Except that a.) there wasn't a bookstore, etc. (there was, in fact, nothing but trees, cows, and a couple other B&Bs all around) and b.) Gambier is nowhere near the sea. Here, we were maybe three minutes' walk from a beautiful little bay that also, if you walked far enough, had beach facing the Atlantic. We took walks both nights ("night" being a somewhat arbitrary term, as the sun didn't really set until after 9:30 PM), a much longer one on the second night. We had a fun little surprise waiting for us when we got back the first night in the form of a little black hobo cat yowling piteously outside the bedroom window. Naturally, Ellen and I had to entice it inside with a little ham leftover from my pizza. I mean, naturally. And then we had to cuddle it and pet it and feed it milk for over an hour in the kitchen. Of course. Despite the fact that she was a very well-fed cat. Kitty was absolutely obsessed with doing that kneading thing cats do with their claws on every available surface, and doing it quite deeply, too, so kitty kept getting shifted around between us all. Eventually, we put kitty out the window, from whence she probably went off to make the rounds of all the other cottages. Betcha.
We saw Yeats' grave the next day, and Innisfree (from across a lake, sadly) and another old castle-like building that wasn't really a castle. Plus a bit of Sligo Town, too. The best part of the day--perhaps of the whole trip--was the walk we took along the beach. And by walk, I mean more like "6 mile-roundtrip hike," but anyway. We started around 7:30 or so, and got back at not quite 11. There was some kind of ruin on this peninsula we could just barely see from where the path from the B&B lets out onto the beach, and we went all the way there. So we totally had our own Wordsworthian moment, except instead of Tintern Abbey this was some less-interesting sort of old ruined structure. And we played hide-and-seek in the ruins, instead of writing poems about them. But anyway.
We walked back under the light from a crescent moon that was bright enough to give us shadows on the sand. There were more stars than I've ever seen anywhere except out in the country in Arizona.
When we got back, we had a peat fire in our little fireplace in hopes of warming the place up. The attempt failed, but we did get the cat back in, and Matz and Bowman came by for a while. We had a very ghetto version of s'mores in the form of marshmallow tea cakes which the peat made taste faintly of barbeque. Er, yes.
Day 3: Connemara
I'm officially hating the bus by this day. Ridiculously long time to get anywhere in this country. Grrr. Anyway, we went from Sligo to Galway via Kylemore Abbey, which, when I first glimpsed it as we were driving down the road, my first thought was "I so have this on a poster!" Other than that...well, not so interesting. It's very pretty outside, but there's not much to see inside. The Victorian walled garden is rather nice, though.
We got to Galway around dinnertime, and I think the first thing all of us think as we're walking down the main street in search of food is, "Wow, the Irish sound like Americans." Undoubtedly part of that is the fact that we've been listening to various non-rhotic English accents for the past six months, but the other part is that they actually pronounce their "r"s. What country am I in, again?
We had a ridiculously good uber-Irish dinner at this traditional restaurant that was very small and cute. I had some kind of seafood chowder with a big bunch of soda bread (OMG SO GOOD) and some potatoes. We tried to find some traditional Irish music in various pubs, but failed for various reasons (mostly that we wanted to get to bed early and didn't want to squeeze into really crowded pubs). We did run across some kind of performance art drum band thing in the high street as we were going back to our hotel, though, so there's something.
Day 4: The Cliffs of Moher
Well, this outing was a little rainy. And by "a little rainy," I mean non-stop drenching. There was still too much bus involved, but at least the bus was dry. Anyway, we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which weren't nearly as cool as I expected. Probably some of that was because of the rain, but...yeah, there's some steep cliffs going down into the sea, but the total length of the path you can walk down doesn't exceed a third of a mile, which is sad. Okay, we could've been like the random people who vaulted over the "UNSTABLE CLIFFS, DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE" barrier, but I rather like all my limbs attached, so no.
We stopped in a little town called Doolin for lunch and leg-stretching on the way back. We had more fantastic pub food, and wandered around the (very small) town for a while.
Part of the purpose of this little excursion was to see "The Burren," a very Dartmoor-like land of rocky mountains and tufty grass. The rain made it especially miserable-looking, and I was miserable because we had to be on the bus. (I think bus touring is my least favorite form of travel, if for no other reason than you can't take good pictures from a moving vehicle!)
Day 5: Galway to Dublin via Glendalough
Again with the way too much bus. The upside was that we drove through Ireland's horse country, which looked exactly like Williamson County (right south of Nashville), which is part of Tennessee's horse country (which consists of basically every county around Nashville and then some, but anyway). So that was nice. Parts of the Wicklow Mountains also look very Smoky-ish.
We made one stop, and that was at the ancient monastic settlement of Glendalough. We saw one of those round towers Ireland is famous for--they were bell towers that could be seen/heard for miles around. We had a nice hike/run up to the bigger of the two loughs from which the settlement gets its name, and there were pretty pictures there. Not so pretty was the utterly random bout of serious golf-ball-sized hail that came down for about five minutes right after we reached the lake. Still dunno what that was all about.
Days 6 & 7: Dublin Dublin has apparently been invaded by aliens. That giant lighted spire in the middle of O'Connell Street must function as some sort of homing device, and the matching ones on one of the bridges over the Liffey have to have some kind of similar function. Also, the "walk" sounds for the blind people sound alternately like a bomb about to go off or a ray gun. I kid you not.
Anyway. We had two days to do as we pleased in Dublin. We started off with the Book of Kells, which was fascinating. They have a nicely-done exhibit on the making of illuminated manuscripts and some of the more common symbolism used in the illuminations before you get to the room with the actual Book of Kells (and the Book of Durrow, as well). And then you get to walk through the Trinity College library, which is huge and old and lovely, and I am SO ANNOYED that you can't take pictures. Seriously, it's got kind of an open balcony sort of design, with a big arched ceiling, and bookshelves way taller than me on both floors, complete with rolly ladders to get to them. See the following pictures: 1, 2 (b&w, but grand), 3 (more detailed). I did have a little fun at the gift shop; I got a Dover Thrift anthology of Irish poetry, and a poster based on the poem "Pangur Ban." The poem was written in the margins of a copy of Virgil (I think) by a ninth-century Irish scribe-monk about his cat, Pangur Ban. It's a very sweet poem; the prettiest, although not necessarily most accurate, translation is here. The poster I got can be found in ridiculously huge size here. Lest you think the illuminations are from several centuries ago, note the "illuminated" cat playing Pac-Man at the bottom. ;)
We headed down Grafton Street afterwards. Grafton Street is a bit like Exeter's High Street, only much busier and way cooler. There were street performers out in force, and I don't mean just singers and guitarists--there was a harpist, and a guy with a grand piano. Now that takes dedication. We got to St. Stephen's Green eventually, and it was so pretty that I went back the next day by myself. The "Green" is actually more of a park, and it kind of reminds me of Centennial Park in Nashville, just a bit--both have a very nineteenth century air about them. This one had a lot of Victorian-looking flower beds (or at any rate, they were laid out much like the walled garden at Kylemore, so they're Victorian as far as I'm concerned ;)), a large pond in the middle of things, and hundreds of cherry trees in full bloom, littering the paths with pink petals. We picked a few blossoms with which to decorate ourselves; mine fell off my bag almost immediately, but Stewart's stayed in one of the buttonholes of his jacket all day.
What else did I see in Dublin...we went to an archaeology museum that I thought would be interesting, but sadly was not. (The gift shop was fun, though; I got a book of three Irish legends in English and Irish Gaelic, wheee!) We did pass by the Oscar Wilde statue in Merrion Square, though, which was entertaining. Until I upload the picture, I'll give you the hint that it was commissioned by Guinness as a clue to why it was so amusing. ;)
On Wednesday, I managed to get lost several times before finally running across St. Patrick's Cathedral. (When the aliens take over, I hope they make sense of the INSANE roads in that city!) Lots of neat stuff there, although it was smaller than I expected. It has the prettiest floor tiles of any cathedral I've been in, though; they had several with some kind of knotwork on them. You could also see Jonathan Swift's...um...what's that thing where the religious people stand to address the congregation in Anglican churches? Is it still called a pulpit, or does it have some other name? Anyway, they had that there, and you could also see Swift's grave, as well as that of his best friend Esther "Stella" Johnson, who was buried alongside him, which I thought was rather sweet. (Okay, so various internet sources say they were perhaps secretly married. Either way, it's nice.)
If you're ever in Dublin, go eat at the Queen of Tarts; they have fantastic, well, tarts, and some good chocolate cake besides. Mmmm. Also, go to Half Moon Crepes and get their Nutella/marshmallow/vanilla ice cream one, because it is delicious. We had such good food in Dublin.
Day 8: Trim, Newgrange, and arrival in Belfast
We made our way north via the Norman castle at Trim and the passage tomb at Newgrange. Trim was...like every other Norman castle, really. I'm getting tired of the Norman ones; let's have another ethnicity, people! Anyway, it's famous because it was used in Braveheart (which was kind of set in Scotland...but anyway...), but that's it's only distinguishing feature, as far as I'm concerned. It does sit in a rather pretty river valley--the Boyne River (yes, as in "Battle of") forms a marshy sort of half-moat around it today.
A little further up the river is Newgrange. Now that was cool. Again with no pictures inside, though. And I so wanted to document the awesome recreation of the winter solstice illumination they have, too. (There's a window over the door that lets the winter dawn sunlight into the otherwise completely dark inner chamber for approximately five days in December, similar to the sunlight tricks at Stonehenge and other megalithic sites.) The various carved rocks, with all those triskelion spirals, were fun, too.
We arrived in Belfast to an abundance of puns. We ate at a restaurant called "Thai Tanic" (even funnier when you remember Belfast is where they built the Titanic). A produce-delivery van painted with the slogan "Lettuce Deliver" passed by as we were waiting for a light to change. I'm sure there were more; there were more all over Ireland, really. I suppose one can expect nothing else from the people who invented the limerick.
We also arrived to an abundance of bells. We were staying on the south side of the city, and there were about three churches within shouting distance, and all of them found some occasion to ring their bells pretty much solid for a couple hours Thursday evening. No idea why. Speaking of churches--Belfast, obviously, has a bunch. This, combined with the large hills that ring the city picturesquely and the fact that it's not exactly a walking city, nor is there a whole lot for a tourist to see and do, brought me to the conclusion that Belfast = Nashville. Well, Nashville doesn't have the history of intercine violence, but you see my point. It's kind of scary. I can see why the Scots-Irish and other people from that area of Ireland picked TN and KY and other such states to settle in; geographically, they are remarkably similar. Belfast looks quite a bit like home.
Days 9 & 10: Belfast and environs
We started our first morning in Belfast with a walk around the Botanic Gardens, which were absolutely lovely. Lots of color everywhere. They have a Tropical Ravine dating from 1870-something; it's housed in a large brick building, and you walk all around what is essentially one large room by way of a balcony that rings the thing. Down below are oversized ferns, palm trees, banana trees, etc.; hanging in front of you are vines and pots of various stuff. It's very Jurassic Park. There's also a greenhouse that was built in the same era as London's Crystal Palace, so it's lovely as a structure by itself, but it also has marvelously-colored plants all over inside it. They have a rose garden, but of course it wasn't blooming yet in April. It looked like it would be pretty in June, though.
We didn't do much the rest of the day besides wander downtown a bit. We had to get up early the next day anyway, because we took one of those black cab tours out to the Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which are a couple hours outside Belfast on the Antrim coast.
The Causeway is really incredible. It's this collection of hexagonal stones that was formed by lava, I think, and it reaches out into the sea a few hundred yards. Legend has it that Finn MacCool, an Irish giant, wanted to go over and fight this Scottish giant whose name I forget. So he built this causeway for himself over to the western coast of Scotland (which, coincidentally, is the only other place in the world where stone like this is found) and went to find the giant. Well, he found him, and he saw that this giant was freaking huge--way bigger than he wanted to fight. So he hightailed it back home, Scottish giant on his heels, and went crying to his wife to save him. His wife dressed Finn MacCool up in baby clothes and put him in a cradle (don't ask). When the Scottish giant came knocking and asked for Finn MacCool, she said he was out, but for some reason showed him the "baby." The Scottish giant took one look at the "baby" and thought to himself, "If the kid's that big, the father must be frelling HUGE!" So he ran back to Scotland, destroying the causeway as he did so.
I rather like that version, myself.
The rope bridge was...well, there was a nice walk there over some chalk cliffs. When we got to the bridge, which is very much made of rope and very fragile-looking, and oh, yes, suspended quite a ways over ocean and rocks, I decided that my life would be complete if I gave crossing it a miss and stayed on the mainland. The bridge goes out to an island where the salmon fishing is apparently better than on the mainland; fisherman have been stringing it every season for centuries, and apparently it used to be far less safe than it is now.
Our driver was a great guy who knew all about the politics of Northern Ireland, or at least seemed to; we'd wanted to combine the Giant's Causeway with the political/mural tour of some of the suburban neighborhoods of Belfast, but weren't able to because of time constraints. Still, he gave us a taste of the political tour; we drove by one Republican mural, and he definitely talked for a couple hours about the whole history of the Troubles. We got to talking about the Irish immigrants to America (we always seem to talk about the US to people we meet over here), and he gave us an etymology of "hillbilly" as "person living in the Appalachians whose name is William (Billy); an Ulster Irishman." The OED doesn't support this theory, but it's fun anyway.
After we got back to Belfast, we got on a plane and flew back to Bristol, then had a bus back to Exeter. Had one day off, then class again. And that was my Irish adventure. Pictures coming soon! (I swear, I'll be more entertaining than this in the captions. Well, I hope, anyway.)
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Date: 2005-04-30 05:40 am (UTC)Okay, totally reminds me of the main library at Melk. :) Except at Melk, the ceiling's flatter and stretches to the far ends of the bookcases. Very cool!
It all sounds nifty! One of the history teachers is taking a group on a tour of London and Dublin this summer - I desperately wanted to go, but $$$$. Always a factor. :(
no subject
Date: 2005-05-01 12:00 am (UTC)The library was awesome. I could live there.