Since it's literally a mile walk downhill, and then back up, to see those hexagon pillars, or about $4 each for a shuttle bus ticket, we opted to skip this and just get on the road as early as possible. If you want to see what I'm talking about, google image search for "giant's causeway".
Not too far down the road from Giant's Causeway is another attraction with some nice cliffs, with a sort of cliff island, connected by an 80 foot rope bridge.
It was very, very windy, which was fun, because we kept feeling like we were going to get blown off of the island. Especially the parts without any fencing.
After we left the rope bridge, we drove along the northern coast (Literally, along the coast... like, stone wall on the side of the road, and the ocean on the other side of the wall). We passed through a few small towns huddled between the mountains and the ocean, with some nice views.
We saw some interesting signs, and got stuck behind a tractor for a short while.
We eventually made our way down the coast and arrived in Belfast. For once, we didn't get very lost while driving around, trying to find the hotel, in a large city. There was a tour bus stop right in front of the hotel, but due to the route of a mini parade the bus couldn't make it to that stop at the time. (The full parade being on July 12th... the Protestant Orangemen or something like that, celebrating the Protestant King of Orange's victory over the Catholic king in 1690. Apparently the parade was historically a family event, with friendly neighborhood competition and such, but during The Troubles it became a catalyst for violence.) So anyway, we walked down by city hall and hopped on the tour bus.
Normally the tour is on an open-top bus, but due to weather concerns, we got to ride around in the classic tour bus.
The bus went all around the city, for about an hour or so. We got to take in most of the interesting sites, including everything from the area where the Titanic was built, to all of the government buildings, and from the area where the feud ("the Troubles") was centered (still very divided, literally and figuratively) to the political murals.
The tour dropped us off back in the center of town, so we walked around for a bit. We crossed the river and saw the tidal gates that were recently built, to stop the river from dropping 30 feet or so with the tide.
We took a closer look at some of the older government buildings from street level, and then tried to find somewhere to eat dinner. A lot of establishments were closed as of 5 PM, so we walked back towards the hotel, and found a pub that was still serving.
The early closing might be a historical leftover from the time of The Troubles, when the city center would close down at 5 PM, because nobody wanted to be around when the fighting might start. Even the Subway closed at 6 or 7 PM every night of the week. The tour guide referred to this as the donut effect, since the center of the city was devoid of restaurants, bars, etc., as they had all moved farther out from the trouble area.
There was one roundabout that was the center of the conflict, apparently. There were three streets involved; one home to the British loyalists, one to the Irish Nationalists, and one neutral divider in the middle.
Both sides had memorial parks dedicated to the people who had been killed in the conflicts.
Even now, there are walls between some of these neighborhoods, only a few minutes walk from the hotel where we are. The next hotel down the street is the most-bombed hotel in the world, having been bombed 30 or so times (and rebuilt all of those times).
[ see http://www.forces.org/writers/james/files/ni.htm and http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/53/europa.html for more information ]
Tomorrow we're leaving early to head down towards Dublin again, hopefully with a stop in the fishing village of Howth first. This location was suggested to us by a resident of Dublin that we met at the Continental President's Club, who happened to be flying to London on business, but was happy to talk to us about Dublin while we all waited.
I tried two new beers today, too. Tennents lager, from Scotland, and Carling lager, which the bartender tried to tell me was American, but according to www.carling.com, is "Britain's Number One Lager." In his defense, I asked him in my best Irish accent, so he didn't know I was from the US, presumably.
As always, lots of pictures available in the photo gallery, 2nd picture on page 102.
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