Day 7 - Ireland Adventure

Killybegs to Belfast

Day 7 started as we made our way up and around the top of Ireland from Sieve League to Glencolumbkille.

Through Glenveagh National Park

to Dunluce Castle where, since we hadn't seen enough castles yet, we stopped to look around.

This was one of the more ancient old things we saw, dating from the Late Medieval era.

The views from the castle were incredible.

We rode into Northern Ireland, without really realizing it until we noticed the road signs were no longer in Gaelic and the kilometers were now miles.

Obviously we knew the Troubles between Ireland and Northern Ireland had been put to rest a couple decades ago. I'm not sure what we expected, though. Being children of the '70s, our image of Northern Ireland had long been a lot of car bombs, machine guns, and barbed wire at the border.

Photo:
Stolen from the Internet

No passport check. Not even a "Welcome to Northern Ireland" sign. There was literally nothing at the border indicating we were leaving one country and entering a different country.

Side note: We were told that there would start to be passport checks once Brexit actually happened, since the United Kingdom would not longer be part of the European Union and Ireland would still be part of the European Union.

Once in Northern Ireland, we made our way to the Causeway Coastal Route that runs along the upper coast of the island and to Giants Causeway. Basically the shoreline looked like this for miles

Giants Causeway is steeped in myths and legend about why it is like it is - which is very hard to describe. It was incredibly fascinating.

And somewhere on the walk I"m sure they explained why, geographically, the ground was naturally shaped like this all along the coast.

Selfie!

We continued along the coast for most of the day until we reached Belfast. Once we found our hotel, tucked way into a side street, we were ready to hit the town.