July 1

Lough Swilley

July 1st

I'm really having trouble keeping track of days and dates, so I hope this is correct. I'm writing this a day late because Sarah and I were having a little craic last night. So here's a recap of yesterday's marvelous drive.

We were all set to go our own way to the Giant's Causeway when another helpful Irish gentleman answered a question as I was leaving the breakfast area. I found it quite interesting that in the Republic the mileage is listed as kilometers and in the North it's listed as miles. I was wondering why, and were the miles the same as what we consider a mile. It seems that England uses the same mileage as we do while all the rest of the EU uses the metric system with kilometers. Leave it to England to be contrary. Works for me!

Anyway this friendly Irishman, as they all are, I'm finding out, asked where we were off to and how we were getting there. Sarah has been the navigator as late and happened along at that time. After some discussion with him, she hopped in the car and announced we'd be taking a diversion to our planned route that would make us all very happy. Needless to say, thanks to that gentleman we were directed to the Antrim Coast Drive. Very narrow at some times and very 'bendy', as the Irish say here, it was incredibly beautiful. The wild and rugged coastline of County Antrim I'm sure has very few rivals. I still have to sort through those pictures and will post one, but it will hardly be representative of the view we saw.

Our first site after a while on the drive was the Carrik-a-rede Rope Bridge. It's a rope bridge high above the ocean below. Sort of a dare devil type thing that none of us wanted to try. Better for another day.

I should mention that when we left in the morning it was a typical Irish sprinkle, but by the time we were along the coast drive the weather had cleared except for some normal Antrim fog.

After the rope bridge we arrived at Giant's Causway. Again, posting a picture is hardly representative of this amazing site. The basalt columns are “giant” to say the least. If it had been drier we might have climbed out further, but I'll leave that for when any of you visit the Causeway. Truly a geological phenomenum.

The Causeway was followed up by a visit to Bushmill's Distillery. The oldest licensed distillery in the world – 1608 – and they celebrated their 400th birthday last year with a new blend – 1608 – that I had the opportunity to taste. I'm not a big whiskey drinker, but this stuff was definitely smooth and carmelly tasting. The unique thing about all Irish whiskey is that they are distilled 3 times. By the 3rd time the alcohol content is about 85%. They mix that with special still water to bring it to 60% and that is called spirit. After years in oak casks it becomes the whiskey that we know today. The process was fascinating.

We did a quick stop by Dunluce castle that is falling into the ocean – the first mishap when the Dunluce family was living there was when the kitchen fell off when the edge of the cliff crumbled and 14 servants fell to their death along with it. Still the remains are a site to behold.

We then headed “home” to our B&B and stopped in the pub for a quick drink before dinner and a chat with one of the regulars. Our friendly guys from the night before were no where to be seen. (There's another story to these friendly guys about the night before that will have to wait for another post, but it seems that Sarah and I had made quite an impression on these lonely guys).

After dinner Sarah and I decided it was too early – or actually too light out (it was 8:30pm) to stay cooped up in our room, so we headed out and ended up in our favorite pub occupied only by, Eugene the cute young bartender, and had a few and a really nice chat with Eugene covering a whole spectrum of topics, until we dragged ourselves away and up to bed.

So ends our Wednesday.