The Giant's Causeway

Happy New Year everyone!

Anyone celebrating the Mayan's miscalculations? Feeling fortunate with a renewed appreciation for life and setting goals to match?
My only goals are to see and do more. I find that the less specific my goals are, the easier it is to complete them. I did have another goal, but decided that reading 365 books this year might be a bit much-unless I stick to children's books, but then my vocabulary already suffers from my lack of adult interaction as it is...

Anyhoo...

where were we on the Ireland trip?

I believe I last left you as I was winding my way along the Causeway Coastal Route in my little rental car...

When I arrived at the Giant's Causeway and saw how far the walk would be, I decided I'd better eat first. The cafe had a delicious looking tomato, basil, mozzarella sandwich that looked like it could hit the spot. I could NOT stifle my grin when the the lady asked if I'd like a "wee bit" of salad and then handed over my first Irish note.

Our family has a couple of membership cards that get us into places for free, or at least for very little. It sometimes even covers parking or other amenities like a discounted bus lift down to the actual causeway.

Buses are for wimps.

Belly satisfied and camera at the ready, I began my descent. There were people coming back up looking a little worse for wear wimps poor souls. I took no pity on them as I whistled past (of course I was going downhill and they were going up, but that's beside the point).

If I were to take you traveling with me in the future, one thing you have to know now- I have a wicked pace, but I stop for photos. I may walk faster than everyone else, but I will always show up last.

 See what all of those silly bus riders missed?

 And as usual, the water beckoned. 

Surely I was a mermaid in another life as I could have stayed in 

this one spot for the rest of my holiday.

Eventually, I made it down to the actual causeway. There had been this large model in the visitor center that I scanned before heading down the trail and I remembered it listing two areas... a big causeway and a little causeway.

Well the little one was now overrun with a school trip. Teenagers were everywhere and obviously needed to pose by every rock.

Bye bye little ant people!

So after several failed attempts to get my own self-portrait, I decided to walk on to the "other" causeway area with the intention of coming back to this smaller one when the people traffic thinned out a little.





The helpful color-coded signpost indicating different skill level walking paths, encouraged me to go with the pretty red route that would take me up over a ridge to what could only be the "other" causeway.

that doesn't look so bad...

the red flags were some artsy thing going on

But wait a minute, I was climbing back up, and I am never fond of going uphill.
Ever.
But I trudged on.



When I finally came to the conclusion that I was an idiot, there was another sign cheerfully alerting all who had made it this far that due to a rock slide, this path was now closed. They couldn't tell us that at the bottom?

Yay.







My options were to go back the way I came from or go this way.

Yes, I did.

At least the view was great

There were lots of lovely people holding onto stair rails while gasping for their last breath.

I felt pretty good about myself as I kept marching up those 162 stairs with the sweat trickling down the back of my neck.

I guarantee that if the husband had been with me I would have been in full whinge mode and begging to be carried.
Traveling alone is empowering!

This is the photo I took and iMessaged to my son-because he's deathly afraid of heights :)

My red path...

returned me to the car park!

Well, I had received my workout (in the future, RED means DEATH), and there's always post cards, right? I HAD actually been there...

In the visitor center I drank another bottle of water and actually looked at the massive display this time.

There was no "other causeway", I had been on the only one there was. Moron.

Sigh...I couldn't go home without seeing it, so back through the doors I went.

My sensible shoes were not feeling as practical as I had thought they'd be and I still had another good hike ahead of me at my next destination, so this wimp climbed aboard the bus...

...which allowed a very well-rested tourist to get a few shots of what she came to Ireland to see, complete with another self portrait.

I focused on an emergency phone box and nimbly jogged back and forth between it and my camera (propped on a rock) until I got it right. Thank you people for not stealing my camera.

I saw this great sign as I was leaving, warning us NOT to walk on the black bit as it gets very slippery. Oh. Oops.

Go away people, I'm trying to take a picture here.

Me and water. I have about 42 more pictures that look very similar to this one

And THAT was my day at the Giant's Causeway.
Still on my first day in Ireland with a couple of hours of sunlight left, I jumped back in my car (yes, after taking the wimp bus back up) and quickly headed towards the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.

Good thing I had my sensible shoes!