Belfast, Belated: Part 1

     It's been over a week since I arrived home from Belfast; I've been contemplating this blog post for awhile, but have been terribly lazy and haven't written it until now.

     Last Thursday, my study abroad program (IFSA-Butler, for those of you who don't know) took all of the students studying in the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland.  Kids from practically every major city in Ireland--Dublin, Limerick, Galway, Cork--trekked up to Belfast for four days of fun.  We were all housed in the same hotel, and I'm pretty sure the manager was praying for the weekend to be done.  Over 200 noisy American college kids taking over three floors of the hotel?  You bet they hated us.
     The buses from the different cities arrived at staggered times, and the Dublin bus was one of the first ones there.  Although the bus ride was only three hours, we were all somehow exhausted and crawled into bed for a quick nap before dinner in the restaurant downstairs.  After dinner, we headed out to an Irish pub where a band was playing music.  Then the fun began.
     My favorite character was by far the old lady in red.  She was a buxom lass, probably 60 or 70 years old, and had bright red lipstick on her wrinkly old lips.  She would dance around the bar in a jig-like fashion, approach young men, and wiggle her eyebrows in a attempt to seduce them into dancing with her.  It didn't really work most of the time; instead, you'd see an aisle in the crowd open up wherever she turned, with all the guys turning guiltily to the side whenever she approached.
     There was also the extremely intoxicated young Irish guy who danced around the room and grabbed random strangers and swung them around in a circle until they could get away.  Most people managed to avoid him; I had no such luck.  I was standing around watching the band when he approached me and held out his hand.  Thinking he was going for the classic handshake, I took his hand.  That was the fatal error.  I immediately got swung into the middle of the crowd and spent the next three minutes trying to keep up with my very exuberant dancing partner.  All in all, I had a load of fun, but I found I'm still no more knowledgeable about how to properly dance to Irish music.

     We got up awfully early the next day, Friday, to trundle back into our buses and see the touristy sights of Northern Ireland--namely, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, Dunluce Castle, and the Giant's Causeway.  We had an excellent tour guide on the way who told us literally everything about the towns we crossed.  I now know where to find the Wrestling World Champion--he's the head chef in a restaurant he owns that's perched near the sea in Northern Ireland.

    Our first stop was the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.  It was built for no apparent purpose but to connect the coast to a smallish rock nearby.  Nevertheless, it was a beautiful sight that I'll never forget.  I was really looking forward to a dangerous, swaying, breakable rope bridge to cross, but it was disappointingly solid and unmovable.  Even though the crossing itself wasn't as exciting, the views were breathtaking.

The rope bridge in all its glory.  Sadly, it didn't really sway side-to-side, even if you tried.

     The next place we visited, Dunluce Castle, was the ruins of a castle near the sea.  Legend has it that one day, dinner never came.  When the mistress of the castle went down to see what the problem was, she opened the kitchen door, and--nothing.  The kitchen had fallen into the sea.  Looking at the location of the castle, I can definitely believe it.

     The last place we visited was the Giant's Causeway.  The Giant's Causeway is a volcanic rock formation, a large patch of 6 and 7-sided stone tower things.  It's present on the Irish coastline and the nearby Scottish coastline, and there are loads of myths associated with it.  The one they told us at the museum was that there were two giants, a Scottish giant and an Irish giant named Finn McCool.  These two giants were constantly fighting from their respective coasts--probably throwing rocks at each other or something similarly brutish.  One night, the Scottish giant built a bridge between the two islands and snuck over to Ireland, intending to kill Finn in his sleep.  By the time Finn noticed the bridge, it was too late to run, so his very clever wife dressed him up as a baby and put him to bed.  When the Scottish giant crossed over and demanded to see Finn, Finn's wife said he was out, and mentioned the new baby.  Noticing the enormous size of the baby, the Scottish giant was so afraid of the supposed size of the father that the ran back across to Scotland and tore up the bridge behind him.

     This is what we're left with.

 Next time: the black taxi tour of Belfast!