Destination: Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland
– The Giant’s Causeway –
Our first destination in Ireland was the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. I’d seen photos of it floating around on Instagram, which led me to do a Google image search, which then resulted in us visiting. If it was 1/2 as cool as it looked in the photos I knew it would be amazing, and it sure didn’t disappoint, it was stunning!
The Giant’s Causeway is located right outside of Bushmills, which was actually our very first attraction in Ireland, I mean it’s not Ireland until there’s whiskey right! We bought the Distillery Reserve Whiskey, it’s only available from the distillery in Ireland, to bring home with us – talk about a great souvenir. Unfortunately we didn’t do a whiskey tasting, having landed in Dublin at 6 am and making a 2 hour drive there we were running on fumes, but we did take a quick peek around the grounds.
About 10 minutes down a scenic road, it was so gorgeous that we actually turned around and drove back down it to take some photos, you get to the Giants Causeway.
There is no fee to get access to the Giants Causeway, only for the parking lot. So while you can technically pull over and park on the narrow, curvy road and chance a parking ticket, we opted to pay the £9 fee per person, which also included audio tour, and it was worth it!
As you head down the steep hill towards the ocean you overlook bluffs with long green grass blowing in the wind, bright yellow wild flowers, and if it’s a clear day can see the outline of the coast of Scotland. This also happens to be the windiest area in all of Ireland, and it was freezing!
At the bottom of the hill, the causeway stones started to appear. First very large in size and light in color, which grew increasingly darker and smaller as we got closer to the ocean. They were all perfectly hexagonal in shape, very smooth and pretty uniform in size, which amazed me because they were formed as result of a volcanic eruption 60 million years ago.
There’s over 40,000 basalt columns, or causeway stones, which make up this UNESCO world heritage site and I would absolutely recommend a visit if you are traveling to Northern Ireland. I’ve never seen anything like this place before in my life and it does not disappoint. My only advice would be to wear comfortable walking shoes…. for whatever reason I decided it would be a good idea to wear wedges, which made it difficult for me to maneuver around the piles of stones, but in the end my struggle was worth it!
That’s my story…
xoxo, andrea
