July 16, Giants Causeway, Belfast

A very adventurous day!  We got a rather late start - it must have been because of the late night in the pub last night!  It took a while to check out of our hotel, get to the airport and get our car.  Fortunately, we have a GPS in the car so we weren't too worried about getting where we wanted to go. We headed north to Belfast.. Tom did a great job driving, he hugs the left of the lane a bit and made me nervous, but he really got the hang of driving on the left side if the road.  There are a lot of roundabouts, and they get a bit confusing since you go around them backwards from what we are used to!  We checked in to our hotel in Belfast then we decided to head to Old Bushmills Distillery, which is the oldest licensed distillery in the world. Unfortunately, it's the silent season when they shut down for maintenance, but we were still able to tour. We are not whiskey drinkers and even after visiting the oldest distillery in the world, we still aren't!  I didn't even finish the free shot they gave us!  Tom says he will stick to Guinness!

After touring the distillery, we made our way to Giants Causeway.  What a sight!  Columns and rock formed from a volcanic eruption 60 million years ago, it was very interesting to see. It was a long, very windy and wet hike to get there!  The ocean looked wicked slamming up against the columns and crazy people were right out to the edge of the water!!  We were so glad we took the time to get there.

After visiting Giants Causeway, we ate dinner at The Smuggler's Inn and made our way back to Belfast. We had hoped to visit Derry, but we just didn't have time.  We were both exhausted, and we just wanted dessert!  After searching the area around our hotel, we found a small Italian restaurant, I had the most delicious lemon gelato with limoncello in the center and Tom had Chocolate glory which was gelato, chocolate sauce, and chunks of chocolate fudge cake. Delicious!

Tomorrow we explore Belfast, head to the Titanic museum and take a cabbie tour of Belfast. I'm curious to see what is in the Titanic museum... there are no artifacts from the Titanic wreckage site. What will we see?