It has been a personal goal since we started coming to Ireland to visit the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. I had heard about the odd geological formations, seen pictures of the stark coastline, and read the stories of Finn McCool. It was something I needed to see.

And so I have.

The visitors' center at the heritage place has a display of the several theories that have been advanced over the years. Among them are the fanciful story of Finn McCool, a giant of Ireland who built the causeway to spy on a rival giant in Scotland; the belief the hexagonal columns are the fossilized remains of giant bamboo; and an unlikely story of folding lava and cold Atlantic waters.

This last theory is the one accepted as truth currently. My personal belief leans more to the McCool story. For me, the facts speak for themselves. We have people all over the world, and we have lava flows all over the world. Wherever we have people, we have evidence of construction. Wherever we have lava, there are no other hexagonal columns. Case closed.

It was incredible to climb around on the basalt blocks. A mountain of rock would jut out of the sea to a height of two stories, but walking up to the top was as easy as climbing an unbalustraded stair. The only thing that made the advanture around the rocks tricky was the harsh ripping sleet blowling horizontally to the ground.

In 2008 when mom, Sean, Jon and I came to Ireland, we pretty much enjoyed mild weather. The only really bad day was when we went to Kylemore Abbey in the Connemara Mountains. On that icy, windswept day, breathing was accomplished at the great risk of drowning, or suffering from a brain-freeze headache worse than a Wendy's Frosty. Sean, Jon and I formed a wedge in front of mom to give her a wind break. Just for fun, we occasionally split apart to see how far off course she would tumble before getting her footing.

We're not good people.

But Manannán mac Lir, Celtic god of the sea, must have been paying attention and waiting his chance to avenge the fair Peg. The weather at the Giant's Causeway made Kylemore look like a warm air hand dryer. It was cold and wet on the north coast, the sky was leaden, and sea looked like roiling tin.

It was beautiful.

There are pictures in the visitors' center of the causeway on a bright, sunny day. And it is very nice looking. But there's something about the alien landscape that only seems real beneath a film noir sky.

Following the Giant's Causeway, our Paddy Wagon bus driver, Martin, took us to Belfast, a city of about 350,000 souls. Once we got into the city center, where the peace walls don't exist, it didn't feel all the much different from being in a modern midewest city in the US. Population-wise, it's smaller than Columbus, Ohio. But structurally it was not dissimilar.

Martin gave us about 90 minutes in Belfast to walk around. Jon and I went into a department store to look around, a Burger King for coffee, and a Cafe Nero for another coffee for the bus. Our day started about 7:05 a.m. when the bus picked us up on Upper O'Connell Street by the Savoy Theater. It ended about 6:45 p.m. at the same location when we debussed. Two days left in Ireland.