Giant’s Causeway – Day 13: 18/08/2007

Our bus to Belfast departed at 7 am, so our alarm clock woke us up at 5 am GMT. Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland (United Kingdom), and is 134 km away from Dublin. At 6 am we got on a taxi, and ten minutes later we were again in Busáras, the main bus station. We walked around searching for something hot to drink, but our tries were useless: everything is closed in Dublin before 7 am (excepting Spar supermarkets, but they don’t serve anything similar until seven). The bus departed ten minutes late, but we arrived at Belfast three hours later, as it was expected. It never really stopped raining until late at night.

The coach to Giant’s Causeway had the departure point at the Belfast International Youth Hostel. After taking some pounds out from the cash machine and our first breakfast in the UK, we led to the hostel. We had about an hour to kill, so we decided to connect us to the Internet. At 11:10 am we were leaving Belfast behind. We had only booked the transport, and we had almost two hours to see the Causeway, a very wide area. At first, I thought there would be enough time, but finally we were in a hurry not to miss the coach back to Belfast.

The Giant’s Causeway is, according to Irish agency tours, regularly called ‘The eighth wonder of the world’. I was determined not to leave Ireland without seeing it; but even I DID know it was going to be very beautiful, I didn’t think it was going to be THAT beautiful… It’s wonderful, marvelous, savage, amazing… and a bit frightening, I guess.

This life’s must see geological phenomenon is located in the northern coast of Northern Ireland, and it’s sort of a wild coast with more than 37,000 hexagonal shaped stones (which are estimated to be 62-65 million years old). In fact, most of the columns are hexagonal, because there are some with four, five, seven and eight sides (the tallest is about 12 metres high).

This phenomenon came about as molten rocks (lava) were cooling off. Legend, however, has it that Finn McCool, the Irish giant, who lived there with his family, thought he was the biggest and strongest giant of Ireland. Benandonner, the Scottish counterpart, challenged him to a fight, and sent a messenger to notify him – but, in fact, was much larger than Finn. Finn then started a causeway to walk to Scotland; when Benandonner noticed it, he decided to build the Scottish end. Once the causeway was finished, Benandonner sent a messenger to tell Finn that they will meet the next morning. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over Finn and pretended he was actually Fionn’s baby son. When Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him, he met the wife and the ‘baby’. He assumed the alleged father must be gigantic indeed and ran back to Scotland, removing part of the causeway in case he was followed by Finn. He left in such a hurry that he his boot came off and it is still here today. There are also shapes of a camel and pipe organs in the walls of the cliffs. The “causeway” legend corresponds with geological history in as much as there are similar basalt formations (a part of the same ancient lava flow) on the Scottish isle of Staffa.

We spent another two hours going back to Belfast. After an expensive lunch there (and, Núria agreed, a healthy and tasty one – chicken liver lambs and a 8 ounces beef steak), it was almost time to get back to the bus station. Three hours later we were back in Dublin.

Dublin – Day 12: 17/08/2007

The alarm clock woke us up at 6:50 am GMT, as always. This was another day for planning: we spent the entire evening planning our trip to Giant’s Causeway. Our first stop was Busáras, to get some information about the buses, and then we went to Conolly Station, the main train station for the trains that go to the north of the island. We finally booked an express trip to Giant’s Causeway, so we would be able to visit Belfast for a while. I phoned the agency, which was set in Belfast, and booked it for the next day. We also visited Windmill Lane Studios, where U2 recorded their first three albums (even it is no longer located on Windmill Lane; it only remains the old building, and it is covered in graffitis).

Dublin – Day 11: 16/08/2007

The alarm went off at 6:50 am GMT as usual… We had lunch in “Quiznos sub” just to take some salt bags and napkins (that we will use at dinners in the hostel). After the meal, we went to the Tourism Office to buy a postcard and to get info about a trip to Giant’s Causeway (we ended up in the Northern Ireland Tourism Office, and the treatment was fast, useful and concise), and then to the language centre to connect to Internet. At 4:20 pm we walked to Fitzwilliam Place, the street where U2 filmed the videoclip for ‘The Sweetest Thing‘ (see also: Dublin by bike). We finally found a Tesco supermarket, and we found good drinking chocolate (ColaCao, of course). We bought some food and went back to the hostel.

We can now confirm that the mysterious gate we saw (and photographed) was, in fact, Bono’s house… Yesterday was only a suspicion, now it’s a fact :-O