The update is a bit late this weekend because I've been very busy. If I was missing driving, I sure got my fill yesterday! A trip to Belfast and 'the North Coast' was plenty of driving to last me a while. I met Paul (from Jax, here with ML also) at Starbuck's and we took a taxi to Enterprise. We got there at 9 AM on the dot, and were the first customers in the place. We got the car and headed to the M1, toward the north. After a few stops for photos and a few unintentional detours, we arrived on the Coastal Causeway. We approached a hill and I knew when we got to the top we'd see a beautiful sight. I wasn't disappointed. We began the coastal tour at White Rocks, which was literally huge white rocks on the water. Too gorgeous for words. Then we went to Dunluce Castle, where I spent way too much time taking what undoubtedly seemed to Paul like a million pictures of the ruins. As some of you know, ruins are my thing! After that, we went along to Giant's Causeway, which you can read about here: http://www.northantrim.com/Causewayguide.htm. This tells the story - fact and legend - of how the causeway was formed. When we got back up to the information center, I asked what time the rope bridge closed. I was told the last tickets were sold to cross the bridge at 5:15. It was 5:05, and it was about a 20-minute drive. Feeling defeated, we got back on the road and stopped for photos of more ruins and gorgeous coastal views, knowing we probably wouldn't make the bridge on time. I was so frustrated because that was going to be one of the highlights of the trip. We decided to pull in anyway, just to see if we could take some pictures at least. We parked the car and headed toward the bridge, past the ticket office, which was closed. This was a mostly uphill hike which I thought might kill me or at least render my knee useless for the rest of the day, but I made it (and quickly, I might add) because we got the idea since we saw other people a bit ahead of us that we MIGHT be able to get on the bridge. We approached the man standing guard at the gate and he asked if we had tickets. Thinking fast I said, "We did, but they blew away when we were taking some pictures." Okay, okay - I told a little white lie, but when would I be back up there?? This was my chance and I was giving it everything I had. He begrudgingly let us cross. So, I walked across the bridge and was scared out of my mind because the bridge was swaying in the strong wind. There IS a photo, but Paul took it with his camera, so I'll have to post it later. It was amazing, and definitely the coolest thing I've ever done.
We stopped a few more times for photo opportunities and then drove on toward Belfast to hit the IKEA, which luckily was open until midnight for their 21st anniversary. We arrived at about 10 PM, and the store was still pretty mobbed, but we found everything we wanted (and more!) and waited in the checkout line for about half an hour. Conveniently, since we were both starving, there was a little cafe with hot dogs and chips (fries) on the way out. We were so grossed out by the hot dogs - they were nasty - but I ate most of mine anyway because I was so hungry and knew there wasn't going to be anything open at midnight on the way home.
We got back on the M1 toward Dublin and found that it was closed for road works between Junctions 2 and 6. This proved to be disastrous, because there's no directions on any signs that say north or south, they all say the name of the road and the towns you will head to if you take it. Like, it would say A55 Newcastle going one way and A55 Highlands going the other way, for example. In addition, you have to make a split-second decision which way to go while joining insane Irish drivers on a roundabout going about 40 miles an hour. And this was a pretty big issue when we didn't know which towns were in which direction and couldn't find them on the map. Yikes! Paul was navigating and I was driving, so I kept saying, "I don't think we're going south because the moon is on the right of us, which means we're going north." And he kept cursing at the road signs, which I learned before were nearly worthless from my trip last year. I guess we were lost for a fairly long time, because we didn't get back into Dublin City Centre until about 2:30 AM. Then we had to figure out how to drive the streets we've been walking since we arrived. It doesn't help that you can walk whatever way you want on a one-way street, so we had to turn around and drive around blocks quite a few times. AND we were running out of gas in the car, which forced us to be on the lookout for a gas station. Guess how many gas stations are in the city centre? Not very many! An additional complication was the surprisingly huge amount of people on the streets at that unholy hour!!! I was afraid I was going to hit someone while they tried to hail me (apparently every car looks like a cab to a drunk person). We ended up near my house, so we stopped by to unload my stuff. Then I took Paul back to his place and helped him unload his stuff. By the time I got home it was 4 in the morning - 22 hours after I woke up that morning. I fell into bed and fast asleep.
Today I took the car to Dundrum Town Centre to pick up a few more things I didn't want to take on the LUAS or walk the streets with. I wanted to take full advantage of the car while I still had it. Now I'm just about to put together the table I got at IKEA last night. Hopefully it will be easier than driving home last night!!! Worth mentioning: the forecast for Saturday had been for rain, but all day long - ALL DAY - we were blessed with perfect weather. Sometimes I wonder if things are turning around for me in the way of luck...
Take care of yourselves -
jlw
No comments:
Post a Comment