DAY 19 – BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND – SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

Only a few years ago, no cruise ship ever stopped at Belfast, for obvious reasons. With the decades-long sectarian violence there, no cruise line could guarantee the safety of its passengers on a port call there. Thankfully, those days are behind for the good citizens of Belfast as well as travelers who want to see the beautiful city and the striking vistas of the coastline of County Antrim. That is not to say that the differences and generations of mistrust do not simmer beneath the surface, but to almost everyone's amazement, there is peace in the city and a somewhat integrated government. More about that later.

We had chosen a tour to see the Antrim coast, including the Giant's Causeway, a World Heritage Site. The Antrim coast begins just north of Belfast and goes around the northeastern tip of Ireland to the town of Portrush. Our bus driver skillfully negotiated a narrow winding road that hugs the coastline most of the way giving breathtaking views of the Irish Sea, high cliffs, and rolling hills that include “stepladder farms,” so named because they have the hillside divided by horizontal and vertical hedgerows that from a distance look like stepladders.

We had an excellent guide (haven't had a poor one yet!) with a delightful Northern Irish accent (at least it sounded different from Dublin) where every diphthong that we would pronounce “ow” as in “town” came out sounding “eye” so “town” became “tyne.” “House” was “hice” and “south” was “sythe” and so forth. I had to smile every time I heard it – after I figured out what she was saying in the beginning.

We stopped at a miniscule town called Carlough with about 300 of our closest friends in 7 buses for tea (or coffee) and scones. What appeared to be a small cafe kept opening up into more and more rooms until all were seated and promptly served. Amazing! Obviously set up to handle bus tourist crowds and presumably a contract with Princess.

Then a photo stop at Portnareevy to take pictures of a rope bridge. Really? Well, once I understood what it was, guess so. It connects a mainland cliff to the cliff of an island maybe 100 yards away. The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge was used by fishermen to take their gear to the island and to bring their catch back to the mainland. One could say that it has been “shored up” to be a tourist attraction now and you can take your life in your hands to walk across it, but we merely got a few photos from several hundred feet above it, got back on the bus and continued to the main attraction.

The Giant's Causeway is a four mile stretch of coastline with basalt columns which look like a giant must have stacked some hexagonal poker chips, oh, maybe 37,000 or so stacks. Some are a few feet high and some are 50 to 100 feet high. It's not like anything I have ever seen before (except in one of the internet forwarded emails about fantastic sights – where I have seen them!). Now geologists explain that they were formed from lava flows that apparently cooled slower than usual for some reason and contracted and crystallized into mostly hexagonal columns. It's almost impossible to describe with words, so I'm going to gamble that I can reasonably upload at least one picture on the tortoise-like internet on the ship.

Giant's Causeway - one small section of it.

Now for the real story: The causeway was made by Irish giant Finn McCool who wanted to get access to a giant living on the Scottish island of Staffa. He built the causeway from stone and went to defeat the Scottish giant, but retreated quickly when he saw the the Scot was much larger than he. Finn came home scared and his wife told him to wrap himself up in a blanket and go sleep in the bedroom. The Scottish giant came across the causeway to Finn's house to see what was going on. His wife told the Scot, “Oh, my husband is out at the moment, but if you'd like to see my baby boy, he's sleeping in the bedroom. The Scot was so shocked at the size of the “baby” that he was panicked by the imagined size of the baby's father and ran back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway as he went. By the way, the same geologic formation surfaces from the Irish sea at the Scottish island!

This was one of the highlights of our trip so far – one could say a “giant” highlight. It's worth seeing if you come to Ireland. Reluctantly leaving the site, we had “lunch” (really dinner) at a Portrush hotel, near the Royal Portrush Golf Club, where the Irish Open was recently held, a first for Northern Ireland. At the hotel we had the same dinner I remember having at virtually every hotel on a coach trip of Great Britain many years ago with Karen, her brother Ken, and her mother Alice: roast beef, two kinds of potatoes, peas and carrots, and Yorkshire pudding. It was very good, however, and I finally got my pint of Guiness!

On the return trip, our guide gave us a very objective view of the history of the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics, including the partition as a result of an agreement reached between the British government and the new Irish Free State in 1921, which was opposed by many in Ireland, in fact sparking a civil war throughout Ireland between former allies in the struggle against England. But in the end, the partition has stood and reunification with the south is very unlikely.

She mentioned that 93% of children in Ulster are educated in sectarian schools and opined that integration and friendship between the two factions will not happen until Catholic children and Protestant children are educated in public schools together and find out they are not so different after all. She seems like a wise woman to me.

One final word about St. Patrick, who grew up in Northern Ireland. It was here that he became converted himself to Christianity and vowed to bring all the Irish people to Christ. It is interesting that he did so in a very inclusive way. The Celtic Cross, for example, incorporates a circle that represents the sun, a symbol used in pagan worship on the island. In so doing, he brought people gradually to a belief in Christ, and the pagan ways faded. I think he would have agreed with our guide as to the way to bring all of Northern Ireland together.

On to Iceland!