European Adventures: It’s a fish, it’s a beaver, it’s a crosswind?

How does it come to be that something described as a fish and a beaver turns out to be a sign for ‘crosswinds’? So this has nothing to do with the primary topic of this blog, but the fact that we just figured out what the sign meant called for an urgent address to the matter – or more for the fact that I just find it hysterical. Backstory: we were on our way back from somewhere and I saw a sign on the road (like a yellow caution sign) that had a vertical stick with something coming off the top of said stick - what I promptly described as a fish. I admitted that the thing coming off the top didn’t actually look like a fish, more of a blob with lines inside, but it was the first descriptive word that came to mind – hence it becoming ‘ Elise’s fish sign’. So basically I was the only one that had seen it and no one actually believed me (happens all the time) but to my delight, Kelly saw it soon after. Problems arose when we weren’t seeing anymore to show Mary and find out what in the heck it meant, which brings me to this important moment. We are on our way back from Giant’s Causeway and I FINALLY saw one…more like 3 in a row…but too late that Mary didn’t see it, however, Holly did – which now brings in the beaver. Holly was set on it looking more like a beaver. Good thing another one showed up a couple minutes later because I’m sure we would have debated what the better description was until which, inevitably, no resolution would be found. Seeing the sign, Mary told us it means crosswinds. CROSSWINDS…what? 1) Apparently the US doesn’t care about warning American’s of hazardous crosswinds and 2) I’m pretty sure no one who hadn’t been told from infancy what that sign was would actually get anything related to wind. All in all, it was supposed to be depicting those conical wind flags…

Now that that’s out of the way, my cleared conscience can describe the epic day we just had. We went to Belfast Saturday afternoon to stay the night so that we (and by we, I mean Mary since none of us drive stick) wouldn’t have to drive 5 hours each way on Sunday. We arrived in Belfast around 7 or 8, although it seemed like 4 with the whole daylight situation, and once we got settled in the room went out to explore and find atm’s/food. Belfast is an interesting city, not entirely sure how else to explain it. We were more in the college district than anything else, but the vibe and fashion sense isn’t anything I can compare to. I had thought that there was some other city I could compare it to, but I’m pretty sure it will now be the one that I compare others to. However, Holly did describe one bar/restaurant place as a UK version of the Jersey Shore…that might fit.

We walked for a half an hour to try and find a Barklay’s bank (UK sister bank to B of A) but as Kayla had apparently experienced before…there were none to be found, despite looking up a location before we left. Sooo yay for bank charges up the wazoo…not. In other news, pounds are cool…notes AND coins. The 1 pound coins have engravings along the sides and the notes are just colorful (seemingly like all currency apart from the US) with cool designs. Even though I like their currency, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t excuse the dismal currency exchange rate. That’s what you call painful.

Belfast!

Dinner consisted of a quick meal at a ‘chipper’ (general/slang word for a takeout or fast food place) followed by watching The King’s Speech back at the hostel with some other people there. Everyone there was really awesome and the hostel was again spectacular…I’m really hoping the luck with hostels continues.

Holly really likes ketchup with her fries...

Today (Sunday) we went up to the Giant’s Causeway, north coast of Northern Ireland near Antrim, and it’s AWESOME. It is basically an area of rock formations along the coast and even inland in some places that are long cylindrical stones. Pictures included below if that description didn’t actually make any sense. It’s so weird…no one knows how they formed (geologically) BUT there is a legend/story/myth about two giants that I will summarize (well I got the summarized version…so I’ll give you that one). Once upon a time there were two giants, one from Scotland and one from Ireland that apparently didn’t get along. The larger giant (Scotland) got angry when the smaller one (Ireland) decided that he would cross the land bridge connecting Ireland and Scotland. Chasing him back to Ireland the smaller one went and hid at home pretending to be a baby. The wife stated that she had no idea where he was when the Scottish giant came looking and much to his dismay, he left Ireland furious, smashing the land bridge. So what makes this story awesome is that there is (or was?) an area in Scotland that has/had the same rock formations… dun dun dun.

Back to the fantastic landscape – again which is best explained through pictures, but I will try. There were two main areas along the coastline/intertidal region that jutted out and you could walk all the way to the water on. All of the solid stone was composed of these cylindrical formations and there were rocks more toward land. These formation things went from being along the ground to tens of meters high – so cool. Apart from this area, there was a walkway that went up in the hills a bit which provided more opportunities (not that I needed any more) to die of scenic beauty and trigger happy picture taking. There is an area that is called the ‘organ’ because there are huge formations along the cliff that look like organ pipes, pictures below. And as we have been making a habit of, we departed from the beaten path and found ourselves on a cool land jetty (best description I could think of) and ended up walking back that way…instead of scaling rocks again (which Kayla ended up doing anyway to come get me). It was an awesome/relaxing day despite all the walking, climbing and rain showers at the end of the day (we unintentionally timed it quite well actually).