The Sunday was exciting again. I was in Bray with Tino, my colleague. Bray located on the coast, in the south of Dublin.
We drove there with the DART. We went along the beach, is a bad beach, because the beach is a very stony beach. And the water is not very cold, but it is like a sludge, many algae. Then we went to the mountian called Bray Head. Certainly we want to see the city from the top of the mountian, because it was very nice weather. Well, we climbed the mountain, which was 241 metres high. During the way we have already seen the beautiful landscape.
On the top was 360° awesome view.
On the top I have bathed in the sun and then we have choosen another way down to the city.
The last days were really impressive I think. The Friday was not soo great, but the FIFA World Cup has started. yeah 🙂
On Saturday I was with Tino, my colleague, in Howth, which is located in the north-east of Dublin. Howth is located on a peninsula. And this peninsula we have explored. Certainly not quite, but enough. That was impressive! We have seen beautiful Landscapes and furthermore seals, which were feed from the tourists there. That was at the Harbor of Howth.
We couldn’t go around the whole peninsula. But we have done the quarter of the peninsula I think. There we have seen very impressive cliffs and landscapes.
The World Cup started also for Germany on sunday. Certainly we watched it. Very nice game I’ve seen so far in the world cup.
Hey again!
Well, last time I said that I would blog something like useful information about Belfast, but I would prefer to do this next time because it happened so much last weekend, especially on Sunday the 30th May… Additionally I hadn’t enough time to finish this (a bit larger) Blog earlier, sorry for that.
Since the very beginning of our staying in Belfast Friedrich, Riccardo and I wanted to see one of the steep coasts here in Northern Ireland. Probably the most famous coast over here is the “Giant’s Causeway”, so we decided to check this out on Sunday.
Therefore we had to search in the Internet for the possibilities to do such a trip – and we found a good offer: The travel organization “McComb’s Executive Travel & Tours” offers a tour across the Antrim Coastal Route to the Giant’s Causeway with a few ‘photo stops’ and other attractions included for 20£ per person.
The tour lasts from 9.20 am to approximately 7.00 pm, thus we had to get up early on Sunday morning. At the McComb’s office we bought the tickets and waited a short time before the travel starts. The bus was totally full and our driver, he calls himself ‘Mr. Sexy’ xD, was really kind and funny. He talked the whole trip about the many sights, points of interest and about the Irish and Northern Irish history.
Our first (and short) stop was in Carrickfergus for taking photos from an old castle. At least we realized that we definitely chose the right day – the weather was awesome! While taking photos and kidding around, we were accosted by two girls from Stuttgart: Anna, who studies since two years in Dublin, and Christine, who visited her. Based on that, we found two nice travel companions… 😉
the upper part of the Shepherd's steps with Christine and Anna
Along the Coastal Route we saw so many beautiful landscapes like hills, cliffs and even beaches. The beaches here looked like the Caribbean ones, which were kind of strange and amazing together, because I never expected that in Northern Ireland. A hundreds of photos later we had another short stop at a small and nice harbor and at a viewpoint where we could see a rope bridge, of which more later…
After a few more driving minutes along the coast and through pretty villages and another three hundreds of photos later we finally reached the Giant’s Causeway. The bus parked besides a restaurant, where you could have a meal if you ordered one at the bus driver before. But we didn’t.
Now you had to choose between 2 paths down to the Giant’s Causeway: An easier, shorter and almost boring one or a longer, more exciting path within a stair part called “Shepherd’s steps”. Well the second path sounds tempting, so the girls and we three followed its call.
the hexagon shaped stones of the Giant's Causeway
The path leads us towards the cliffs with an impressive view of the Causeway below. We reached the “Shepherd’s steps” which have approximately 160 steps, it was quiet cool. On the way down we made several stops and watched at the breathtaking panorama. After the stairs we followed the path straight on, looked around again and continued going down.
Finally on the Giant’s Causeway we made a short stop and had a little lunch. While eating we had a good overview of the countless hexagon shaped stones, it was amazing! After the lunch we were going to discover the area and took thousands of photos. At this point I could get the statement from the Irish: “The Giant’s Causeway is known as the 8th world miracle.”, it was really marvelous and I begun to wonder how all these stones get their hexagonal shape. I remembered the old legend which the bus driver told us before:
„Hundreds of years ago there was a giant called Fionn who builds a bridge to walk to Scotland to fight another giant. But when he saw the Scottish giant he was afraid about his size and fled. The Scottish giant followed him. Fionn’s wife laid a blanket on him in order to cover him from the Scottish giant by pretending that Fionn is her baby. Therefore the Scottish giant was afraid, because he imagined that the father of the baby must be very huge, thus he fled in panic and destroyed the bridge in case that Fionn wants to follow him.“
(Not a real quote, but that’s approximate all as far as I remember…)
In actual fact the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway are originated millions of years ago by volcanic activities, lava flow and some eruptions.
me climbing one of the basalt columns
Some of the stone columns were approximately 8 meters high on one side (on the other side more columns like a hill), so it was a perfect chance for me to climb a bit… 😛 Regrettably the time was really barely and we had to rush with all our doings, although we had 2 hours for discover the Causeway.
Back in the bus we bought some tickets for the rope bridge (4£ per each) and the bus started to move. Our next stop was only a few minutes away in the village Bushmills. There we visited the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distillery where we could buy and taste some whiskey. Around the distillery was a strange smell in the air, I can’t describe it anymore, but it was kind of funny. ^^
For tasting the Bushmills’ Whiskey normally you had to pay, but lucky as I am (haha) I got a voucher for free Whiskey tasting from the bus driver after a short small talk. We followed him to the bar where I, and even Riccardo without a voucher, drunk a glass of Bushmills’ Whiskey. While this we talked to a trucker from New York who also took part on the trip to the Giant’s Causeway.
After our little Whiskey session we staggered… uhm… walked back to the bus and drove to the last attraction: The rope bridge. On our way to the bridge we had another two short photo stops at an old castle ruin (the bus driver called it one of the most romantic places in Northern Ireland) and at a cliff near a very long and beautiful beach.
I am the posing one in the middle ^^
After we arrived we hiked along the cliffs and I was amazed of the view below: The water was like you would normally expect from the Caribbean – crystal clear and cyan with bright sand below and no seaweed (like almost everywhere today). That fits the nearly cloudless sky and the warm air temperature perfect. Just before the rope bridge was a queue so we had to wait as well, but it wasn’t too long anyways. Finally it’s our turn. We went down a little stair and entered the bridge. The way like the bridge waggled and swung was kind of funny. You had a nice view down between the gaps, by the way… On the other side, there was only a small (but high) island, we enjoyed the nice view and took another 3700 photos. You could see the Scottish coast from there very clear. After a few minutes our time was running out again, so we had to return to the bus.
From now on we drove straight through the country in the direction of Belfast. Time to relax and digest the whole exciting day, but only when you are able to ignore the always-talking Mr. Sexy (headphones are very useful in this case :P)…
We arrived in Belfast shortly after 8 pm, and the bus driver says that this was his longest tour since years. The bus stopped at several points and we had to say goodbye to the girls. We get off at another stop and went home.
Later this evening Friedrich and I went to the Bot in order to relax a bit, but against our expectations it was totally full of people – I’ve never seen such a full pub! No way to relax, but it was fun anyways. All of the girls there were responding well to the Euro vision Song Contest winner Lena, as they heard that we are from Germany. Also we met a crazy English guy, but never mind… xD
Just one more thing: I strongly can recommend this (or a similar) trip to you, it is absolutely a good investment! And prepare to take millions of photos!
Wow, I never thought that I’ll write such a novel… Oo
I hope my grammar is not that bad like Master Yoda’s… xD
Hello people!
What to do at the ‘holy’ Sunday? According to the sunny weather the question were quite fast answered. Since the very beginning of our arrival in Belfast we wanted to climb one of the mountains nearby Belfast – so it was settled. We took all the things we could need on this journey, above all the camera, and walked (or better hiked) straight through the city towards the approximately 7 miles in the north distant ‘Cave-Hill’.
Already at the foot of the mountain I was impressed about the beautiful view of the nature. On the way up we took a lot of photos and were more amazed of the sight the more we came higher. We saw many guys driving up and down the hill on mountain bikes, hardly surprising because most of the paths and trails seemed to be made for biking.
probably the highest point
Finally on the top of the Cave-Hill (approximately 350m) we all got stunned by the amazing clear and wide sight above Belfast with its harbour, the surrounding land, the distant mountains and even narrow the coast of Scotland(look at the panorama-picture from Friedrich)! As a result of that the view reminds me a bit of the sight while gliding. 😀 After a few minutes we discovered something funny: On a lower laid peak, not far from us, sat a single guy having a BBQ, such epic funny scene!
view from the abyss of the highest point to the BBQ-Guy
After a couple of minutes and a hundreds of photos later we decided to go down. About the same time, maybe a bit earlier, rain clouds appeared at the horizon, by the way. Half way down we discovered two small caves… Wait a sec… Yay, that’s why it’s called ‘Cave-Hill’! xD Whatever… One of the caves was about 30m high on the crag and the other maybe about 4-5m. We wanted to begin in a small way, so we climbed into the lower one, nevertheless it was quiet tough because we all had the wrong footwear thus we had barely grip. At the same time it starts to rain, to our disadvantage because the rocks getting even more slippy. After a short break in the cave, the rain is still falling, we decided to climb back down at last. That was really hard and dangerous at once but the adrenaline was soaring, a very exciting moment!
exploring the 'mysterious' cave
Finally we left the mountain behind and we came across a nice castle somewhere in the woods. The door of the fence was closed, so we can’t get very close to it. Because we were quiet exhausted we took the bus to Belfast City Centre but walked the remaining way to our apartment anyways.
All things considered it was a very cool, fascinating and exciting day so that I just can recommend it to you to do similar on any sunny weekend, if you interested in nature and adventures! 😉
Next time, maybe tomorrow, I’ll tell you something about my workplace and I hope I can post pictures of it, too.
See you then!
Hey guys,
Today I had my first day at work but I will start with the weekend. On Saturday night we went to a pub how´s called „Botanic Inn“. We took a cap, because it was raining. By the way the caps are cheeper than in Germany. After an half hour the other people from our group appeared. It was quiet noisy in the pub, but not because of the music; people were laughing and talking loudly and at minute intervals glasses got broken. Some of the irish took a cup too much, like a man next to us. He was very drunken and his friends took pictures and made fun of him. I had a nice talk to a guy named Metthew and two girls how were absolutely sweet^^. At 1am the bar had closed, so we went home.
Next day, on Sunday we decided to hike to „Cave Hill“. The weather were irish mixed at this day but we had been protected by umbrellas and rainjackets. We saw the buityfull countryside of the north of Belfast and took a lot of pictures like this:
At 9am in the morning I was at work. My boss and the employees introduced me in the work process. In this project my company is responsible for a lot of workstations which used for X-rays and the diagnose. They showed me the infrastructure, how to maintain the serverfarm and whats to do if there occur allerts or errors. One guy „Berry“ was very friendly to me and I asked him if he know somebody hows would rent or sell me a bike because my company is directly in the city-centre. Tomorrow another stuffmember Metthew (but not this boy from the pub) will pick me up and than we will go to one of the hospital to setup a new workstations. I am very excited…
