We had our only Northern Irish company visit in the morning, and were told to dress business casual, with change of clothes for later explorations. I wore a button up and my nice-ish green jeans, with my suit jacket, and the plan to simply trade small heels for sneakers and a sweater for the jacket. Our visit was to Bushmills, the other Irish whiskey. On the way, Gabriel had us stop to see a castle that had once been quite large, until a piece of the hillside released underneath it, and all the servants in the kitchen fell into the ocean with a chunk of the castle.
Bushmills is the oldest distillery in the world, and received its license to distill in the 1600's and has been in operation ever since. Their bottling capacity is actually greater than their production, and since Jameson's production is greater than their bottling capacity, Bushmills has a lease to do much of the excess bottling. According to Niall, the representative with whom we talked for a while, it is better to be your competitor's bottler than to let anyone else bottle for your competitor. Might as well get some of that greater Jameson money anyway. Bushmills has benefited tangentially from the revival in popularity of Irish whiskey, so Jameson and Bushmills are much in the same boat on those things, despite Jameson doing better overall. As is unsurprising after talking to Jameson, the target market for their rebranding is of course, young people. They have created a honey whiskey to compete with brands like Jack Daniel's, to go after women as well.
After a fairly brief meeting with Niall, we took a tour of the distillery. It was much more interesting to go into a working factory than to see recreations like at the Jameson tour. It was quite warm in nearly ever step of the process, from the mash to the distillation, to casking. They use many different barrels, including bourbon barrels and madera wine barrels. The girl who lead us on the tour was only 18, and was headed in the fall for Bristol to go to university. She was quite excited to meet us, and talk about college-ish things with us. So there was learning going in both directions.
After the tour, we were given free samples of their drinks, and I had the honey whiskey. It was quite good, but no better or worse than the Jack Daniel's honey whiskey that we have at home. The girls headed out to the bus first, to change into our casual clothes. I switched shoes and put on my sweater. Then the boys changed, and we all prepared to head for Giant's Causeway. If you are familiar with Devil's Tower in Wyoming, you will know about how volcanic matter turns into hexagonal columns when it cools and the surrounding soil eventually erodes away. Giant's Causeway is much like walking around on the top of that. Gabriel told us the story about Cuchillain (koo killin, as we learned from our hurling playing friend), which he finds significantly more probable than the story about the volcano.
There once were giants in Scotland, and this part of Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, was ruled by Cuchillain, the great warrior. The giants heard of Cuchillain, and were incredibly motivated to go and kill him, as is the habit of giants. Cuchillain's wife heard of this plan, and advised her husband that it would be best that he does not fight these giants, for he would most certainly lose the battle. She devised an alternative plan. When the giants came, Cuchillain would lay down in the baby basinet. He did just that, and when the giants crossed the land bridge between Ireland and Scotland, and came knocking at Cuchillain's castle door, Cuchillain's wife let them in, and asked them to sit and wait while she fetched her husband, who was cutting wood out in the fields behind the castle. The giants, left alone in the room with Cuchillain (a rather large man) laying in the basinet and pretending to be a baby, realized that if this was the size of the baby, what must be the size of the man? In their haste to remove themselves from the castle and from all of Ireland, their heavy footfalls broke up the land bridge between Ireland and Scotland, shaking the remaining stone in the north until it undulated behind them and uneven stepping stones in their wake.
Either way, it was a long, hot walk in the sun along the cliff edge, and a much cooler and shadier trek down the steep trail on the cliff face (no guardrails, because this ain't America), and a cool ocean breeze blowing across the actual Causeway. This is yet another of my stops that will make significantly more sense with pictures. There were large boulders tossed by the ocean onto the shore, and interestingly, distinct edges of rock, where one side was light and one side was nearly black. I don't know if that was a feature of algae or some other phenomenon. The hexagonal rocks, like surprisingly geometric stepping stones, rose unevenly out of the sea, and were excellent climbing spots. Since I have never been to the top of Devil's tower, I can only assume that this is what it looks like from the top. We took a family picture on a particularly pointed outpost. A photographer was doing some kind of Irish potato ad campaign, and Emy and Zoe became potato models for the brand. Why they were photographing bags of potatoes at Giant's Causeway, I'll never know. And how Leta came to decide that two of her girls needed to go become potato models is perhaps just as much of a mystery.
It was veritably blistering in the sun, with the heat bouncing up off the rocks. The hike back up the hill to get back to Gabriel and the van was exhausting. I was still wearing my button up and long pants, and carrying my sweater, which Gabriel had admonished me to bring. I ran the last few steps up the final stairway, and very nearly collapsed on the grass at the top. A convenience store was nearby, and I was desperate for a coke. I found one named Margaret, which is Marnie's full name, and I bought it because I miss her. I thought I heard her laugh on the bus, and I turned and then was sad. She was part of my little crew, and I always hung out with her. I'm going to miss her these last couple of days.
We stopped for lunch along our way, at a place whose name I forget, but it featured on the Game of Thrones tour that leaves from Dublin. I charged my tablet, which was near death, and had some soup. I am fairly exhausted of eating out all the time, and eating so heavily all the time. Several of the boys played pool, and I watched and finished the last blog post I posted.
After Giant's Causeway, we continued further into the hinterland, to a rope bridge. I forget the name, which looked an awful lot like Irish for a place that professes to be more English than Irish. It is allegedly quite famous, and it cost us six euro to go. This became another massive hike in the sun, and still I was incredibly inappropriately dressed. I like that Leta surprises us with excellent visits, but slightly more warning (extensive hiking coming soon!) would be nice. I personally hate surprises anyway, so... Massive hike notwithstanding, we made our way out to a fabulously beautiful Irish cove that looked so picturesque, and the water so clear, it could have been tropical. The rope bridge was, in fairness, a bit of a disappointment. It was far too short and far too sturdy to be truly terrifying. The cliffs on the other side of the bridge were quite beautiful, although I'm sure that most of my pictures could be mistaken for The Cliffs of Moher, Aran Islands, the Burren, or Giant's Causeway. Not to be jaded, but they are all starting to look the same.
We trekked back, over hill and dale and through much farmland, to get back to the van, sweaty again for the second time that day. By then it was quite late afternoon, and not much more to do in Belfast. Since we were leaving in the morning, we were advised to spend most of our money tonight. This became a challenge I took very much to heart. Lauren eats earlier in the day than our group generally does, and I was absolutely famished. We tried in vane to rally some boys to go with us, and ended up wandering the streets of Belfast in search of food. It didn't take terribly long, and Belfast is certainly not as scary as I was initially feeling. We ended up at Scalini, an Italian place.
I had the bruschetta, she had a Caesar salad, we shared a Hawaian (missing an I, amusingly) pizza and remarked on the name of the bacon on the pizza, since it was obviously not Canadian, and shared a piece of chocolate cake and ice cream. I had a glass of wine as well, because as I told Lauren, the fastest way to burn through your cash is with alcohol. We had delightful dinner conversation, and I got to know her quite well. It was very nice being out just the two of us, and indeed, we spent nearly every pence we had been given. We meandered back to the hostel, and did most of our packing. I would love to say that at this point, we went to bed, but we didn't.
Unfortunately, when you only spend two nights in a city, the first one is your first night in the city, and the second one is your last night in the city. So there is really no excuse to avoid going out back to back nights. We dodged our arrival night, but around 9 we decided that, if the crowd could decide where to go -- and get there -- by 9:30, we would go out as well. The boys' room, which had all the boys in it, became the pre-funking room. Every single person left in our group was inside, and people (Emily) were already getting misty eyed about the end of the trip. We stood around in the fairly oppressive heat for a while, and around 9:30, everyone began collecting themselves to go out.
The only pub that I was particularly interested in was The Crown, so named by a husband and wife pair. The husband was Catholic, the wife Protestant. He agreed to let her name the pub The Crown, after the monarchy, if he could decide where the logo would be depicted. He selected the mosaic tile on the front step. So as you enter The Crown, you're also wiping your feet on the crown. Touche, my friend.
Inside, it was very shiny, which is the best way I can describe all the mirrors and generally reflective metal panels around the very ornate bar and seating. Instead of haphazard collections of tables and chairs, this pub was mainly dominated by a dozen or so wooden booths, with doors, and leather seats inside around generous tables. Carved animals with Latin phrases ornamented the columns of each corner of these booths. It was certainly an adults' pub, and we came off as quite raucous upon our arrival. Most people had a drink, and a few girls found some Aussies to talk to (it seems there are nearly as many tourists from Down Under as from America around here.). Lauren, Dale and I had our fill fairly quickly, popped our heads into Robinson's next door to see if anything remarkable was going on there, which nothing was, and left for home. I liked it very much that Dale was also ready to go home, Tanner is awesome, and makes me feel better about how much I swear and my lack of faith, but he is much more willing to go out, and won't come back until later at night usually. Dale is on the same wavelength as Lauren and I. I think, actually, that he might have been still battling with his cold. So, perhaps his desire to go back to the hostel is not so remarkable.
No comments:
Post a Comment