Day 8 Into the Republic of Ireland

After a very informational and fun evening in Belfast it was time to head south into Ireland proper.  

The first stop was along the Irish coast.  A place called Giant's Causeway.  

The story goes that there once was a giant named Fynn McCool.  The causeway used to connect Ireland to Scotland.  Fynn was a smaller giant with a wife and they had heard that a huge giant was on his way to challenge Fynn. So Flynn’s wife dressed him up like a baby and painted a rock like a steak and a steak like a rock.  She gave the steak that looked like a rock to Fynn and when the other giant came across she introduced that giant to Fynn's baby.  Fynn ate his steak while the other giant tried to eat his own and could not.  So after seeing the size of the baby and how easily it at the steak when he could not he decided against meeting Fynn himself and ram back to Scotland destroying the causeway as he went.  A Great story and an amazing place. 

All of the stones that are scattered around are hexagonal.  Volcanic eruptions created the size and shapes of the stones.  The stones even create natural staircases around the entire area.  Truly amazing to walk around and again take too many photos.

Our next stop was our Northern Ireland in a town called Londonderry.  Like Belfast there is still a lot of religious tension.  Around the interior of the city is another wall.  But compared to Belfast's relatively young wall Londonderry's looked to be about at least 300 years old.  

Cannons were along all the city walls.  These days the walls look like they are protecting the stores, restaurants, and shopping malls.  The city is also known as Derry.  There are more Catholic Irish leaning people in town that don't want the city connected to the UK.  On our way out of town there were more Union Jacks than in town representing the Protestants in the area.  

After our lunch stop in Londonderry we drove south to the border into the Republic of Ireland.  Again there was nothing really showing the change of country outside of a sculpture in a round about.  My poor passport feels so unused. 

We arrived into our next city for the next two nights of Galway.  The hotel we stayed at was on the outskirts of town.  Very sketchy area with missing letters from buildings and abandoned buildings.  A little off-putting when your sheets have holes in them, you go to the front desk to request a sheet change and they just give you the sheet to change yourself.  Or as one other person on the tour thought that someone was constructing the world’s largest ransom sign.

So after changing my sheet we went into town for dinner. Being at another port city I decided on a seafood pasta dish.  The price was a little steep and but so was the portion size, way to big.  So after a long day I headed in early to get a good night sleep for another day in Ireland the next day.