Wednesday May 22, 2013

Today ended well, but every once in a blue moon I get in a mood where I am mad about something and it spoils everything else.  Well today was one of those days.

We woke up around 9:00 after not setting an alarm again.  We packed in a rush and left around 9:30.  We had a lot of driving today so this could have started "the mood".  We stopped at Grianan of Aileach stone ring fort on the way to Northern Ireland.  It's situated around Derry, and when writing today I can say that it was pretty decent, with a view of Inch Island (Joey would like that, he pretends to be an 'inch' sometimes).  But in the moment I wanted nothing to do with this stupid circle of rocks.

 

 

 

View of Inch Island

 

Our next stop was Dunluce castle, on the Antrim coast.  Again it was pretty cool and I can see the value of seeing something more historical, since that's kind of Melissa's thing.  But again, I was irritated that I needed to pay 12 pounds to see a ruined castle when we have seen a million ruined castles all over the countryside.  We did get the kids some goodies here, also 'too expensive' at the time, but in hindsight, it was a pretty decent deal for a very cool gift.

 

 

 

After this was the Giants Causeway.  This is where 'the mood' hit its peak.  Who on earth wants to pay 17 pounds to park at a car park, which is not even close to the free natural area, along with the other tourist lemmings? Not me.  But we did it anyway and walked the mile down to the causeway.  Not only was it clogged with human cattle, but they also bolted safety-lines all over the rocks.  In my opinion, the only thing they could have done to spoil the beauty of this unusual site is to post 'no diving' signs.  We ended up hiking off the trail along the coast, where we would be left in peace, and Melissa got me to settle down and my mood returned to something closer to normal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At about 4:30 we got to Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, but since we had a 2.5 hour drive, we skipped this and headed down to Balbrigan where we got a couchsurfing response from a french woman named Cathy.  After shepherd's pie and leek with cream, we played games with her 10 year old daughter, and after they went upstairs for bed, we packed our bags for the morning flight to London Stansted, and went to bed around 11:30.

Just a cool road we ended up driving