Day Five

The morning dawned far too early for my liking, having had yet another late one the night before (not to mention having had a few drinks!). The Captain wanted to get up early and go exploring, and I woke up as she was getting herself ready and decided to go and find a place to have a bit of me-time. I ended up walking down to the cliffs. The day was gorgeous - bright blue skies, reasonably warm, and the views were spectactular - rolling green hills down to the blue sea.

I was walking down there when Mum and Dad called, so it was all pretty special. I found a nice little spot overlooking the water and a few boats, and settled in with my book. Eventually a few of the others from the tour strolled past, and a while after that along came the Captain. I ended up racing her back up the hill towards the hostel (no prizes for guessing who got her ass whipped, and it certainly wasn't the Captain!). We showered and organised our stuff, set Grasshoppa up for a good call on the degradation of her attitude for a word of the day win, and headed out to the bus.

Our first stop for the morning was the Carrick-a- Rede rope bridge. It was a scenic walk along the clifftops (with a slight pause for Grasshoppa to fall into some stinging nettles laughing at the concept of FOMO), and then we got to the bridge. Let's just say it's not for the faint of heart. The bridge is 20m long, and 30m above the rocks and ocean. Fishermen used to use the bridge for salmon fishing, although it's not done any more.

The bridge took us over to Carrick Island, which is basically a grassy knoll atop a huge rock. We posed for many photos, and tried to get a group jump shot (which I also fail miserably at!). Then it was back across the rickety bridge, up the God-knows-how-many steps and back across the clifftops to the bus.

From Carrick-a-Rede we headed to the place I had most looked forward to seeing, and was especially excited about spending my birthday at: the giant's causeway. I have long wanted to visit the place, and I was certainly not disappointed. I missed most of Connor's history of the place, and the legends surrounding it, because I got a phone call from Matt and Jo. I finished the call just as we were pulling up *sigh* We hopped off the bus and decided that we'd take the Shepherd's path across the top, down the cliff face and straight to the causeway. It was a pretty phenomenal experience. We were so high up, you couldn't really make out the individual rocks that make up the causeway.

Somehow we ended up singing a bit of Queen on the way down, helped out by Robyn and Matt - completely random, completely hilarious! We even posed for our own version of the Queen II album cover!

Finally we made it down to the causeway. For once in my life, there was no hesitation to go climbing on things that would normally deter me because I'm so damn unfit. I was a freaking mountain goat that day! I absolutely adored being there. I definitely was in no hurry to get going, even though we were quickly running out of time. There was a whole lot of posing going on, that's for sure!



I ended up catching the shuttle bus back up to the top (there was no way I was going to make it up on foot, and 27 was too young to die, especially on my birthday!). I was totally soft about it, but I'm ok with that! We had a little bit of time to check out the souvenirs, grab a cold drink and get back onto the bus.

From the giant's causeway we headed to Belfast. As we drove through the city, I was feeling slightly nervous. There'd been some attacks the week before, the usual violence between the Protestants and the Catholics. I wasn't overly worried, until Connor decided to tell us that the hostel wasn't named Paddy's Palace as that would make it a target for attack, and that he wouldn't be leaving the bus anywhere near the hostel for the same reason. In fact, several of the coaches were torched a few years before just because they play up the whole Irish leprachaun stereotype and the locals don't appreciate it. Awesome. Felt totally safe then.

It got better. We decided to do the black cab tour, which was the only way for us to easily see Belfast without the coach. We were booked for a later tour, so we popped up the road for a Starbucks break and some lunch, then went back to the hostel to shower and change for the evening. We had to hang around for a while waiting for the cab (we thought we'd been forgotten actually), but eventually one showed up. It was full of other members of our group, and they said the tour was fantastic.

Our driver took us straight into the Protestant area and parked in a dodgy kind of park. We were surrounded by murals, similar to what we had seen the day before in Derry. He gave us a bit of a rundown of the area, then told us we could get out and take photos of the murals, but he would drive a little further down to pick us up, and he'd be leaving the engine running. Turns out he'd been kidnapped there before and tortured for 3 days. Yep, feeling TOTALLY safe. We had a (very) quick walk through to where he drove up to, snapping pictures as quickly as we could. This is where the mural is of the soldier in a balaclava pointing a gun at you - I swear it follows you no matter where you stand. Scary stuff.

Once we got back in the cab, we drove through the gates (which are still closed every night) in the wall that separates the Protestant and Catholic areas, getting a little more history along the way. We then stopped at the peace wall. Basically this is one section of the peace lines that segregate the Protestants and Catholics, but it's dedicated to finding peace between the two groups. It's obviously painted over every so often, but stopped to sign our names (vandals that we are!).

We then headed through the Catholic areas, hearing more stories of some of the terrible things that happened during the Troubles. It's hard to believe that people can do such horrible things just because someone believes in a slightly different religion to you (and the history that goes with it, but really, religion is the root of all evil!). We heard stories of murder, kidnapping, torture, and other brutal crimes. This was definitely putting a downer on our trip, but was very worthwhile hearing about first hand.

Eventually our tour came to an end, and we were dropped off near a pub, where the DPA was meeting up with a friend of hers. We (the Captain, Grasshoppa, Big Mumma and I) ended up leaving her there and heading off to find somewhere for dinner. We found a Thai restaurant, and had one of the best meals of the trip. I had my birthday dinner in a Thai restaurant in Belfast, with another Aussie and two Americans, drinking French liquer. Totally awesome.

After dinner we headed back down the street to have a drink, and ended up at - where else - a JD Wetherspoons! The Captain and I don't travel without a visit to a Wetherspoons somewhere! Quite a few drinks later (to the surprise of the Captain at least), I called time on the night and headed back to the hostel. It had been an amazing day, an amazing birthday, and it will be a long time before I have a better one.