Giant's Causeway revisited & Learning to Drive
Friday night was another successful dinner in our international series. Brian, Mary Ann, Samiyah, and I treated our American, Italian, French, Swiss, and Scottish friends to charcoal-grilled burgers, corn on the cob, Tex-Mex dip, banana pudding, and brownies and ice cream. So maybe the corn wasn't such a big hit, but the burgers and desserts didn't last long at all. I sliced up one of the pickles my mom sent, and they ate it up. It was a hot topic of conversation since they knew we didn't get them here in Ireland. (The "American style" pickles here are apparently "rubbish". haha)
On Saturday Brian and I searched for a car to rent to go to the Causeway. No one had an automatic available, so we had no choice but to learn to drive stick shift the hard way. Our little Megane had a card key and a push button start which took some time to get used to. It was hard to tell if the car was cranked or not. After some instruction from the rental guy, a few times stalling out, and a few times peeling out, we were on our way! The hard things about driving here aren't remembering to stay on the left hand side of the road or even navigating through the roundabouts. What's really hard is the hills and working the clutch! Oh yeah, and staying close enough to the right line so you don't hit the curb, car, tree, ditch or whatever
might be on the left sidewalk...
The Causeway was neat as before, and I got to see some things I hadn't already seen. We sat on the edge of a cliff and enjoyed our PB & J sack lunches. What a view! On an unintentional detour while looking for the rope bridge, we ended up on the steepest, hairpin-curviest road I've ever seen. That was scary. It was only big enough for one car at a time, but there were cars going both ways. Brian was fine going down, but I had to drive back up. I got to the first steep turn and didn't have enough momentum to make it and the car stalled. Talk about freaking out! There was also a car coming down towards me. Luckily no one was behind, so I guided us back down (backwards) SLOWLY into the parking lot to wait for traffic to come through and my legs to quit shaking.
Enough bad driving stories.
My German friend Chris came up from Dublin and stayed the weekend with us. We went to Portadown for church. It normally takes over 3 hours to make that trip via bus and train, but we made it in 2 in our trusty little rental. In the extra time before church started, we went traipsing through a field of cows to get to the edge of Lough Neagh (say 'Lock Nay'), the huge lake in the middle of Northern Ireland. Yeah, I was in church clothes, but oh well. The worst part was the bugs, literally like a plague.
Here are the latest pictures:
Pictures 79-106
At the end are some pictures from Nicola's camera. He didn't sleep through the 12th parade like I did, so there are a few shots of that as well as some from the road trip to Galway. Enjoy!
Happy Dog Days of Summer to those of you sweltering at home. I'm so sorry! It's not like that here at all: breezy and cool.... I hate to rub our 65-70 degree weather in your face, but I think I just did. ():-)
On Saturday Brian and I searched for a car to rent to go to the Causeway. No one had an automatic available, so we had no choice but to learn to drive stick shift the hard way. Our little Megane had a card key and a push button start which took some time to get used to. It was hard to tell if the car was cranked or not. After some instruction from the rental guy, a few times stalling out, and a few times peeling out, we were on our way! The hard things about driving here aren't remembering to stay on the left hand side of the road or even navigating through the roundabouts. What's really hard is the hills and working the clutch! Oh yeah, and staying close enough to the right line so you don't hit the curb, car, tree, ditch or whatever
might be on the left sidewalk...
The Causeway was neat as before, and I got to see some things I hadn't already seen. We sat on the edge of a cliff and enjoyed our PB & J sack lunches. What a view! On an unintentional detour while looking for the rope bridge, we ended up on the steepest, hairpin-curviest road I've ever seen. That was scary. It was only big enough for one car at a time, but there were cars going both ways. Brian was fine going down, but I had to drive back up. I got to the first steep turn and didn't have enough momentum to make it and the car stalled. Talk about freaking out! There was also a car coming down towards me. Luckily no one was behind, so I guided us back down (backwards) SLOWLY into the parking lot to wait for traffic to come through and my legs to quit shaking.
Enough bad driving stories.
My German friend Chris came up from Dublin and stayed the weekend with us. We went to Portadown for church. It normally takes over 3 hours to make that trip via bus and train, but we made it in 2 in our trusty little rental. In the extra time before church started, we went traipsing through a field of cows to get to the edge of Lough Neagh (say 'Lock Nay'), the huge lake in the middle of Northern Ireland. Yeah, I was in church clothes, but oh well. The worst part was the bugs, literally like a plague.
Here are the latest pictures:
Pictures 79-106
At the end are some pictures from Nicola's camera. He didn't sleep through the 12th parade like I did, so there are a few shots of that as well as some from the road trip to Galway. Enjoy!
Happy Dog Days of Summer to those of you sweltering at home. I'm so sorry! It's not like that here at all: breezy and cool.... I hate to rub our 65-70 degree weather in your face, but I think I just did. ():-)
posted by Kell | 4:24 AM
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