Northern Ireland

Here we are in northern Ireland. Entering the UK — our final country before we head home — feels important. (Except that it kind of seems like Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England should kind of be counted separately.)

The farm we’ve been staying at has been so pleasant (despite the persistent cow odor), that we’ve spent several days and half days just hanging around.

But we did get out to the Giant’s Causeway to see the columnar basalt from our geology textbooks.

It was a bit more confined than we expected. Pictures makes it seem massively sprawling, but it’s actually just a patch of beach where bus-loads of people take turns photographing each other. Thank goodness we got there early! We found some trails sparsely touristed, though, and got to see columns still part of the cliffs.

We also drove to Belfast to visit the Titanic museum. Standing on the dock where she was built and experiencing some of the massive scale of her construction was impressive.

The highlight of the day, though, was probably the cafe next door which doesn’t charge fixed prices; you pay what you want or can. We talked to someone on the board, and she said they operate on the philosophy of “spend tomorrow what we earned today.” All the furniture is donated, occupying the basement space is basically a tax write-off for the building owner, and the staff is mainly volunteers or job-trainees. Really cool.

And we went to Londonderry for a day to walk their walls. (The Netflix series Derry Girls is apparently pretty accurate to life here.) Theirs is the only completely intact walled city in Ireland, having withstood a seige during the Jacobite uprising of the 17th century.

We also took advantage of a bigger city for the cinema. First movie theater since Prague last July! (In Prague you get assigned seats, just like in a theater theater. In Ireland you leave your tray with trash at your seat and the staff clean it all up after the movie.) What fun to see a good movie (Toy Story IV) in English!

But mostly we’ve been hanging around our stone house wandering their fields and playing with their toys and feeling recuperated (I can almost walk without a limp now!).

Ireland has been the friendliest place we’ve visited, hands down. We will be sad tomorrow to leave all the kind and welcoming folks here. However, it will be a bit of a relief to get rid of a car and stop driving again for awhile. Trains and feet, here we come!

To Scotland!