Alex has grown his hair out. It looks good. Don't worry, Erica. He's all yours.
We took a bus into the city center and walked to the Belfast International Youth Hostel. I had never stayed in a hostel before, and wasn't entirely sure what to expect. It was really nice, actually. Alex had booked me my own room, so for three nights I had a double room with my own bathroom to myself. I'm not sure how we managed that, but it was good. The whole set up reminded me of a college residence hall, so the transition from Best Western to hostel wasn't that great a shock. The rooms were clean, I had clean sheets, and, like I said, my own bathroom. I even had an green accent wall in my room, which Alex and Erica didn't have.
We sat around for a while and then went on a walk. We stopped in this cute used bookshop/cafe, and then headed out toward the Botanical Gardens. It would probably be gorgeous in the spring, but botanical gardens in the winter are a bit lackluster. The weather wasn't too cold, though, and it was a nice walk. They had a hot house that we stopped in for a while, and the humidity was a welcomed change from the dry, dry air I had experienced in Munich.
Belfast itself is a bit run down. You can tell that the economic downturn has hit Northern Ireland rather hard. It could also be that it was the New Year's season, so everything was closed and quiet. There's not terribly a lot to see. So after the gardens we stopped at a grocery store and bought bread, cheese, peanut butter, hummus, pitta, a box of Frosties cereal, Jaffa Cakes, and Penguin candy bars. A lovely dinner. I was only a couple days later that we realized there was a guest kitchen downstairs, and that we weren't allowed to eat in the rooms. Oops. So dinner that night consisted of a mixture of all of the aforementioned items. We talked about eating penguins, we might have read a bit, and then we went to bed around 10. A bunch of party hounds, us. But I did get Alex hooked on Jaffa Cakes. The night wasn't a complete waste.
Wednesday, Dec. 31 - New Year's Eve. We breakfasted on Frosties and bread with peanut butter, checked our email on the ridiculously expensive computers downstairs, and walked down to City Hall, stopping in at a Neo-gothic combination church and shopping mall called Spires Mall. At City Hall we got a bus to Cave Hill Park, a very large park just outside the city. Erica wanted to see the caves of Cave Hill, since they were carved by prehistoric inhabitants of Antrim, but they were quite a ways up in the park, so instead we contented ourselves to wander up to and around Belfast Castle, another Victorian Neo-gothic construction that was accented in a faded red paint so that the entire structure looked like a pink and purple Barbie castle. From the castle we walked up the hill a bit further through the muddy trails in the shockinly green landscape. It was the middle of winter, and Ireland is still 10 times greener than anywhere else I've ever been. It was rather...magical. Oh, and apparently if you're going to be in a park in Ireland, you have to have a dog. Everyone we passed in the park was walking a dog. Everyone.
We walked back down the hill, very tired and hungry, since we hadn't eaten since breakfast. We took the bus back to City Hall, and then walked back to the hostel. We had planned to go out that night to an Indian restaurant that was boasting a full Indian meal and Bollywood entertainment for New Year's, but Erica wasn't feeling well, so instead we spent the night sitting in my room at the hostel. Alex and I ran out to the sketchy Indian/kebab place across the street and we ate very greasy Indian food back in the room. Then Alex did dramatic dramatic readings from my copy of J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which was rather entertaining. At one point, Erica was laughing so hard that she ran into my bathroom and came out stating, "Alex, you just made me throw up in Shannyn's shower!" Even funnier was that, directly after the sentence Alex had been reading came "Mrs. Bloxam's tale has met the same response from generations of Wizarding children: uncontrollable retching..." This was so funny that we laughed for a good 10 minutes.
Around 10pm we were starting to get tired. Erica kept falling asleep. Alex silently continued to read The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and I read a bit from Mary Shelley's The Last Man, a book I had been wanting to read for a while, bought and started in Durham, and had not yet finished. I've finished it now. It was very disappointing. Eventually I fell asleep, too. Luckily, Erica and I both woke up shortly before midnight. My clock turned to 0:00. We shouted "Happy New Year!" Hugged, took pictures, and watched people shoot off fireworks all over the city. I called my parents to say Happy New Year. Then Pawel drunk dialed me from Poland to wish me a Happy New Year and insist that I was out drinking, even though I assured him that I had spent the last six hours sitting in my hostel room talking and reading. Around 1 Erica and Alex went to their room, and I went to bed. Not exactly the crazy New Year's antics I had expected, but, you know, I enjoyed it. I'm not a party person. I probably couldn't have asked for anything better.
Thursday, Jan. 1 - Again, I think the better part of the day was spent in the hostel. I know at some point we went back to Alex's bookstore so he could buy some books for a friend. Then I think we went back to walk around the Botanical Gardens again. Other than that, though, I don't think we did anything else. The afternoon found us eating bread and peanut butter, and reading up in the hostel's library. I was bored of The Last Man, so I picked up a book called Rasputin Speaks. I've always been fascinated by Rasputin. I read the first few pages, and it was actually really good, a fictional autobiography of Russia's mad monk. I continued reading it for the rest of the night, but only got about half way before we had to leave the next morning. I think a general rule for hostels is take a book/leave a book, but I didn't have any book I was willing to leave, so I just put Rasputin Speaks back in the library and decided to try and find a copy for myself somewhere else. I later found out that it only went through one edition back in 1941, and even Amazon only had one used copy. I assume they don't have any copies now, because I bought it.
Friday, Jan. 2 - We headed off to the bus station far earlier than I would have liked to get up and caught a bus to The Giant's Causeway. The ride was about three hours, twice as long as a direct drive, but this bus went up the Causeway Coastal Route, which follows the Antrim coast and is very pretty. Belfast and the other towns we passed through were, like I've said, a bit run down, but the countryside is beautiful. Lots of sheep, cows, and horses. I even saw a field of highland mountain cows at one point. We arrived at our bus stop sometime in the early afternoon, got off the bus, and realized that we were sort of in the middle of nowhere. According to Alex's confirmation letter, The Causeway Hotel, where we had rooms for the night, was in the nearby town of Bush Mills, but, according to a sign, Bush Mills was another 2 miles down the road. There were two buildings right near our bus stop, so Alex went to ask if they knew were are hotel was. He had gotten about half way to the buildings when he turned and came back, saying, "Guys, I think that's our hotel." Huzzah! So we checked in, lugged our bags up a set of narrow stairs, and settled into our rooms. Again, I had my own. It was a very nice room with a lovely bathroom and a beautiful view of the coast. One thing I love about all British hotels? They all have electric kettles and tea fixings. This hotel even gave us buscuits.
The entrance to the Causeway itself was a five minute walk from the hotel, so we embarked on our hike across the gorgeous coastline. Again, it was remarkably green and, as Erica noted, the grass looked "like a guinea pig." Don't ask. The Causeway's a bit difficult to describe in words, so instead I will direct you to pictures.
We walked to the extremities of the pathways. I'm not sure exactly how far it was, but it was far enough. There was a path up on top of the cliff. At first I told Erica and Alex to go on without me. I was very tired and I wasn't sure my legs could handle the very steep stairs. But, after waiting awkwardly for about twenty minutes for them to come back down, I slowly ascended the warn and slippery stone steps to meet Erica and Alex at the top. Then we walked back down the steps and trudged all the way back to the hotel. We changed and decided to splurge on a real meal at the hotel restaurant, since we hadn't really eaten real food in Belfast. We were directed to wait at a table in the bar and to order there while they got a table ready in the restaurant. Adjacent to the actual bar itself we saw people eating at cozy wooden tables, so we assumed that was the restaurant. No. It was just an extention of the bar. Once we had ordered and a waitress came to escort us to our table, we were taken to the complete other side of the hotel into a very fancy room where the tables had tablecloths, cloth napkins, and candles. We were the only people in the restaurant. It was rather intimidating. At one point the owner of the hotel came in to assure us that we weren't being exiled and insisted that, eventually, other patrons would join us in the restaurant. They did, eventually. I ordered salmon, which came on a bed of grilled cabbage. I'd never eaten cabbage before, but it was actually pretty good. Everything came with chips. At that point, it was the best food I'd ever eaten. We had a cup of tea, and then retired to our rooms. I know I watched something on TV that night. At one point I flipped to the Gaelic news channel. I'm not sure why, but the woman speaking didn't sound like she was speaking with any particular accent, so the Gaelic just sounded fake. But then again, I don't speak Gaelic, so I don't know.
The next morning we paid and headed down to catch a bus back to Belfast, where we would catch a bus to Dublin.
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