Day 3: The journey to Northern Ireland

We started today really early. Cris and I took a cab at 5am to Heathrow Airport and we met Ange and Bel there. We were on our way to Northern Ireland!

When we arrived at the airport we were a bit hungry so we decided to buy some sandwiches at the café. We sat down to eat them and had a conversation that went something like this…

“Our gate closes in 10 minutes.”

“Our gate is 20 minutes away.”

“…what are we still doing sitting here??”

We then started running to our gate (we had to pass another security point pa), but we made it on time. :P

From Heathrow we flew to Belfast, and we were going to take the Coastal Route bus to Giant’s Causeway, but we landed at about 8:50 and the bus was at 9:05, so there was no way we were going to make it. Instead, we decided to visit Derrry and from there go to Giant’s Causeway.

George Best!

We bought an iLink card which was super sulit. It cost £16.50 and it allows you unlimited travel on all the trains, buses, metro (public transportation) in Northern Ireland for 24 hours. We used it for our bus to the central bus station in Belfast, our bus to Derry, the train to Coleraine, the bus to Giant’s Causeway, and even the bus from Causeway to the nearby city of Bushmills. We were really happy with how sulit it was. Haha. It’s also really convenient because you don’t have to buy any of the train and bus tickets ahead, so we weren’t rushing to catch any trains or buses at a specific time.

The bus ride from Belfast to Derry took us about 2 hours and it passes the beautiful Irish country side - all green, with lots and lots of sheep. 

Derry is a small and quaint city, known for being a walled city. The walls were built in the 17th century to protect the city from local chiefs and is approximately 1.8km long. It was interesting, the city had actually burned down before but the materials were reused to build the wall. We walked along a portion of the wall, and also visited the Guildhall, where the city council used to meet - a very pretty building with an old exterior but a very modern and functional interior - and the nearby Peace Bridge.

Walking to Guildhall Sqaure

Guildhall

Guildhall

The Peace Bridge

From Derry we took the train to Coleraine (around 45 minutes) and were treated with another spectacular view of the coast (the whole countryside is really very beautiful). We arrived in Coleraine having just missed the bus to Giant’s Causeway, but we were able to take the last bus up to Causeway (40 minutes), another beautiful beautiful view on the way.

Giant’s Causeway is only about 3 minutes from the bus stop, so we decided to go and ask for directions to our hostel (which was only a 5 minute walk away!). We stayed at Finn McCool’s Giant’s Causeway Hostel, a small (everything is so small and cute in the countryside) but cozy hostel. We decided to take the last bus to the nearby city of Bushmills (5 minutes) for dinner and to go to the supermarket.

The weather was quite nice throughout the day - cold at 12ºC, but not too windy and no rain. (I found it much colder in London the day before.) At night, it became a little colder, but we were able to take refuge after dinner in the bar of Bushmills Inn and listen to some Irish music!

By 10pm we headed back to our hostel. There were no more buses running, but the sun was still up and bright so we decided to walk the 45 minutes back to our hostel. It wasn’t bad though, you just walk along the paved road, and you get to see the beautiful country side and we even saw the sky turning pink as the sun was setting.

It was a long day of traveling but Northern Ireland sure is beautiful!