We had a short 2 day stretch in Northern Ireland after our Scotland adventures. We took the bus from Edinburgh along the coast of Scotland, which was insanly beautiful with green fields and a dense mist, to where we boarded the ferry.

We crossed the Irish Sea on the ferry and occupied our time with no view (it was very cloudy and rainy) by watching the new Ghost Busters movie in the on board cinema. Hilarious movie..

We made it to the port at Belfast where we then boarded a bus to take us to the city center. First impressions were that Belfast is much more modern and very industrial, this is not true for the whole city though and downtown was quite lovely.

We stayed in an apartment near the harbor, which made our walks to the city center very pretty along the water. We spent our first day walking around and finished with an amazing supper on a small barge. This resaurant is the only water front one in Belfast and had incredible food (our favorite so far)! Quinn tried a traditional Irish dish called boxty, which is basically a potato pancake folded around a filling of some sort. This version had a creamy sea food filling, it was very yummy.

Our next day consited of a day tour to Giant's Causeway. We travelled along the northern coast which is one of the world's top 5 coastal drives: it was spectacular! Everything is such a vibrant green, there are rolling hills, cliffs, and an ocean view! There are also lots of sheep everywhere. I don't have the right words in my vocabulary to describe the beauty of Northern Ireland, it took my breath away at every turn.

We started this tour at Europa Hotel, which actually happens to be the most bombed hotel in all of Europe. We then proceeded along the coast stopping at Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. Here we got to walk along some cliffs with a view of the Northern Atlantic Ocean until we got to a short rope bridge that crosses over the water to a rock formation just off the main cliffs. It was a bit shorter of a bridge than we anticipated but it was fun to cross! The views along the walk were amazing and we've never seen anything like it.

We carried on to the Giant's Causeway which is a large rock formation created by volcanic activity from the sea floor approximatly 60 million years ago. There are many legends about how this causeway was created, mostly about how the Irish Giant, Finn McCool, built it to cross the Irish Sea to Scotland to get a girl ;), so believe whatever you want to believe.

The causeway was amazing! It's incredible to see the hexagonal pillars created so long ago, still intact, and so perfectly shaped. It was very fun to climb in and around the pillars and rocks and get lots of cool pictures!

We also got to stop in at a Game of Thrones pub which houses one of the ten wooden carved doors that HBO had comissioned from 2 fallen trees on set, and it also had an Iron Throne, so I of course got a picture on that.

Another cool item on this tour was our quick stop at Bushmills Distillery. This is the oldest distillery in the world and was licensed in 1608.

It was a full day with plenty of picturesque views. We took lots of pictures so check out the link below for those!

https://goo.gl/photos/xSxASR9sdryVRqX49

Next stop is Dublin, Ireland, so stay tuned for that!

Quinn & Shelby