Dublin, Day Three (Part Two)

The journey from Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge to Giant's Causeway was just long enough that I could recover from the experience. I was kept entertained by Lee's retelling of the legend behind the causeway.

Legend says that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. Fionn built the causeway across the North Channel so that he could walk to Scotland and face his enemy.

In the version of the tale that Lee told us, Fionn sees Benandonner and realises he is much bigger than Fionn. Fionn runs back to his house where his wife, Oonagh, disguises him as a baby and hides him in the nursery. When Benandonner comes to find Fionn, he looks in on the baby. The size of the "baby" makes him think that Fionn must be a giant among giants and so Benandonner runs back to Scotland, destroying the causeway as he goes. What I love (and what I think pushed Soph and I to almost believe the legend) is that there are identical columns in Scotland.

There is of course a scientific reason for the basalt columns (which is still pretty cool). However, when you walk down the hill towards them, you can instantly understand why it is an area steeped in legends about giants.

We climbed all over the columns, having pictures and pretending giant's had walked where our feet were walking. We met two funny Irish tour guides (or security, we were sure which) who helped us take photos. They seemed strangely fascinated with my Welsh dragon tattoo and couldn't quite believe that we had four tattoos each. They were funny though and we loved their stories about their Welsh rugby friends from Magaluf or Malia or Ibiza or somewhere.

After Giant's Causeway, we piled back on to the bus and started on our way to the last stop of the tour: Belfast!

The fog that had descended on us by Carrick and the causeway had lifted by the time we reached the city. The sun was shining and we all wanted to get off the stuffy bus and walk around.

Since Soph and I are terrible tourists, are addicted to tea/coffee respectively and were too broke to really branch out and explore locally.... we ended up in Starbucks. But we really didn't care because we had good coffee/tea, food and the opportunity to sit and people watch.

We spent the rest of our time in Belfast enjoying the sun on the grass outside the city hall. We were both dreading our 3:30am alarm the next morning (we had to be on the airport shuttle at 4am) and neither of us had energy to rush some sightseeing in before we had to be back on the bus. We were enjoying ourselves on the grass though and neither of us felt like we were missing out (at least, I don't think Soph did...)

We arrived back in Dublin late that evening, with just enough time for food and to sort our bags. I'm pretty sure we were asleep by half 9/10pm in anticipation of the morning's alarm.

And by morning, I of course mean the middle of the night.