Hello Hello, sorry it is taking me a bit to get these updated but as it is coming to the end of my time in Ireland there is so much to do. Well this past weekend was great. Before we left for Belfast in Northern Ireland myself and one of the girls on the trip with me, Megan, decided to go out and get some mexican. We got some Nachos, but best of all we got fried ice cream that was actually very delicious! It did have this weird thing on top of it that neither of us knew what it was (therefore we deicided not to eat it) but it looked cool.
On Friday morning, bright and early at 7 a.m. here, we were off on the train to Belfast. As some of you may or may not know, there has been lots of fighting in Northern Ireland over many years. And we happened to go right at the end of the time when some of the fighting was over. I do know some background about the conflicts in Northern Ireland and I am not going to write it all here I will save that for another post, but I will mention a little. Ever since the time of the Plantation in Ireland there has been conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. Religion is huge here and it also has to do with the British who were major players in Irish History. So a short summation is when the British were in Ireland there were the Catholics who are also known as nationalists who fought against British Rule, and the protestants who are Unionists and fought for British Rule. Overall in Irish history the protestants have been the minority group but in Northern Ireland there are many more protestants than catholics. So the protestants wanted to stay under British Rule, Northern Ireland is now considered part of the UK and on the day the Battle of the Boyne happened (when the protestants up in northern ireland beat the catholics) the protestants always go and march through the catholic streets. And as you can imagine this has been the source for much conflict in northern Ireland ever since.
For a while now there has been a "peace wall" between the catholic and protestant communities in Belfast and you are allowed to write on it. So I made my mark up there wishing they would come to a better agreement of peace where the wall is no longer needed.
On a lighter note, on Sunday, we went up even farther north in Northern Ireland up to the Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge. From this part in Ireland you can see all the way over to scotland. And this rope bridge was a concept that many Irish and scottish people came up with long ago. This area was a great place to catch fish. So instead of staying there all day they created a rope bridge and hung a net from it to catch as many fish as they could and came back later to collect what they trapped.
Needless to say the rope bridge was QUITE high up. Which is probably why they created it in the first place. As well it was the only way they could connect the smaller pieces of land right off the shore to the coastline. This is what it would look like if you were looking down from the bridge. God forbid you drop anything you would be dead meat and probably never get it back. The water was quite rocky down below!
Becuase it was really hard to actually get some great pictures on the bridge (1. it was really scary and wabbly and 2. you couldn't spend forever on the bridge because of the que of people to get across) Unfortunately on the long mile hike to get down to the bridge it started to POUR on us. I know my pants were soaked through and I was not sure that my rain jacket would even be able to keep me dry at this point. Everything was wet. But lucky enough for us, when we went across the first time it has almost stopped, and when we went back across the rain was all over. Something else funny, unfortunately i did not get to see this, but one of the workers for the rope bridge was going across and he had shears in his hands and was pretending to cut the bridge while people were on it. Funny, but not for the ppl on it at the time.
After that we headed over to Giants Causeway. This is a natural formation of rocks that is due to a volcano, where the volcano was, who knows. But there is a much better story that goes along with the formation of this Causeway that gave it its name. The rocks are all hexagonal shaped and range in their heights. It is something that you must go see when in Northern Ireland because the whole area around the causeway is stunning with large cliffs and rushing water creating huge splashes. It was a sight to see.
This is a photo of me on the rocks with the crashing waves in the background. So the story of the causeway goes something like this: Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool) as a young boy went out with one of his elders to find this carrot and this carrot was supposed to have all the knowledge in the world. And Finn was told not to eat this carrot but to watch it as it cooked. And Finn while he was left with the carrot went to test the water and see if it was done yet, but upon doing this he burnt his finger and stuck it in his mouth. As this happened Finn of course got the knowledge and his elder came back and yelled at Finn telling him to get out and he was left on his own around the age of seven. But no worries because Finn was a smart young boy with all the knowledge so he made it successfully on his own.
The one thing that Finn was missing was a wife. And he wanted to have a nice scottish wife so he built the causeway to get over to Scotland (which you can see from there) and found himself a nice wife (Oonagh) to take back to Ireland with him. Finn was a happy man until he heard that a giant called Benandonner was coming over to Ireland to fight Finn MacCool for stealing a scottish woman. Everyone in Finns village was scared, but Finn said no worries "I have the knowledge." He told his wife and all the ladies to make the biggest baby clothes that would fit him, and all the men to make a large enough crib to fit him in it as well. So, at the time when Benandonner was going to come to Ireland Finn told everyone to hide in the forest, and he got into the baby clothes and into the crib. When Benadonner came over to Ireland and saw the baby in the crib he cried out "Oh my god, if this is the size of the baby how big is his father?" and like a coward ran back to Scotland and ripped up the Causeway except the remains that are left. Finn then ripped a large chunk out of the land and threw it at Benandonner telling him never to come back again. And that large hole in the earth left Lough Neagh (lock ney) and missed Benandonner and therefore created the Isle of Man.
Both of these last two photos are from the town of Derry. There is a lot of history in Derry and the town actually has three names. Londonderry (as the protestants refer to it) Derry (as the Catholics refer to it) and it has its original Gaelic Irish Name that it was originally given. The town was very interesting. We went on a walking tour to see the different parts of Derry and where some major history in the fighting was. The Free Derry sign was posted by the Catholics during their attempts to free themselves from the U.K.
The weekend was very busy but lots of fun. Hope you enjoyed all of the information and stories!!!
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