Better late than never . . . Belfast Part I!

So - in a final attempt to get us to like them, IFSA-Butler took us to Belfast over Thanksgiving weekend. Since we are in Cork, we had the longest bus ride out of anyone. The driver picked us up in the morning and we stopped in Dublin to pick up Dublin and Maynooth students. Our bus ride in total was about 6 hours. We arrived in Belfast just in time to check into our hotel - Jury's (it is a four star chain of which for some reason the one in Cork is much nicer than in Belfast). After checking into the hotel, we walked about a block next door from Jury's to another hotel where we all went to the top floor where a special Thanksgiving dinner had been prepared for all of us. The food was alright, although the hotel is pretty famous for A) being the place that Bill Clinton once dined and B) is also supposedly historically the most bombed hotel in Belfast. Not scary at all. After surviving dinner, we walked around town some and then it was back to our hotels.

The next day IFSA had lined up a day long bus tour. We drove all along the Northern Ireland coast, even being able to see the coast of Scotland at one point, which was gorgeous. Our first stop was the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge in Antrim, Northern Ireland. At first we were all like "oh, how scary can a swinging bridge be," but to be honest it was definitely pretty freaky at the middle point of the bridge, especially when the person behind you decided to start shaking the thing. The cliff and water below did not look too friendly. After visiting the bridge, we stopped for a quick lunch and then continued on to the Dunluce Castle (seen in pictures 2 and 3).

Picture 1 - The whole gang after crossing the swinging bridge.

Picture 2 - The swinging bride.

Picture 3 - Five of us cramming into an oven in the Dunluce Castle . . . nbd.

Picture 4 - Sharlett, Lincoln, Jenna, and me enjoying Dunluce.

"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." - Henry Miller