North Antrim Coast

If there is such thing as Irish luck, we had it today!  We took a bus tour up the north east coast of Northern Ireland to the Antrim Coast.  It was sunny 80% of our day... almost unheard of in Ireland!  

Our first stop on the bus tour was Carrick Fergus castle.  It's a Norman Castle built in 1170.

We then spent two hours winding up A2 North Coast Road.  It is voted one of the top ten coastal roads in the world.  It takes you past tiny coastal villages with tons of history.  It was such a clear day, we could see the entire coastline of Scotland, which at it's closest point is 12km from Ireland.  We then stopped at the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge.  It's an old bridge from the 1800's which fisherman originally built to access a tiny island to fish salmon.  

Our next stop was to the Bushmills Irish Whiskey Distillery.  We took the 40 minute tour through the distillery and bought our own personalized bottle of 12 year malt whiskey!  The 12 year whiskey you can ONLY buy at the distillery.  

We had a quick stop at Dunluce Castle.  This is also a Norman Castle from the 16th century.  What makes this castle so interesting is that one night, way back in 16-something, the servants were in the kitchen preparing dinner when the ground gateway and the kitchen and others parts of the castle fell into the sea.  The McDonald family who lived there didn't want to fix the fallen pieces of the castle, so they left.  And the ruin is what we see today.

Our last stop of the day was to the Giant's Causeway.  The causeway was built by a Irish giant called Finn MacCool.  He place hexagon and pentagon shaped stones from the coast all the way to Scotland.  

There's this wild rumor going around that the causeway was formed by volcanic eruptions and lava flow... which is clearly incorrect.