Ireland :)

Belfast/Ballymena, Ireland:

We docked in Ireland on the 18^th on a beautiful day, our docking attracted a few people to our ship to watch. We had a meeting with the faculty about the guidelines for this port and then we were announced shore leave. What is the first thing i did? Walk to McDonalds, for internet, but mainly a Big Mac, we are deprived of fast food on the ship J . Afterwards we met up with another group from the ship and went glow bowling and played around in an arcade, and then just chilled in a field in the middle of Belfast. We returned to the ship with all of our junk food from Tesco. Tesco is basically our lifesaver while at port, its just a grocery store with junk food, and we all come bag with so many bags of food from there to last us for the sail to the next port. On the 19^th 4 friends and me took a train to Ballymena to visit my friend’s mother’s cousin’s dairy farm. It was actually such a cool experience we got picked up at the train station and taken to their home. Get this, their house is 300 years old and Timothy Eaton (as in the Eaton Center in Ontario) was born in that house, and Prince Charles and Camilla were visiting there just days before we arrived there. The family that owned the place were some of the nicest and most hospitable people I’ve met, they gave us an amazing lunch composed of 2 sausages, a fried egg, REAL bacon, potato bread, soda bread, Irish wheat bread, and pancakes. They literally did not stop giving us food, after we thought we couldn’t eat any more they came around with dessert, like a lot of cake and bars. And I’m pretty sure they had an infinite amount of tea, and the milk they had was fresh from the farm so it tastes so good! Afterwards they showed us around and we came across these adorable Jack Russel Terrier puppies and played with them for a long time. We went out into the field with the puppies, and my friend had brought a guitar so he brought that and played it. It was so awesome! Helen (the farm owner) took us around the farm in one of the old fashioned land rovers, and then took us into town in her nice land rover, we bought some snacks and got a brief tour of Ballymena and then we headed over to climb Mount Slemish, I stopped halfway because I was getting tired, but the mountain was loaded with sheep, and it was the exact same mountain that Saint Patrick used to herd his sheep on. We went back to the farm afterwards and we got to witness a calf being born, which was a little gross but still cool. We were driven back to the train station and had a joyful ride back, jk most of us slept on the way back. We arrived in Belfast and walked to the McDonalds where we discovered some Class Afloat Floaties that had made some Irish friends, we chatted with them and got some potato wedges with garlic mayo (from McDonalds!) and then wandered back to the ship. That was probably my favorite day at Belfast. As you know we have 2 port programs at each port and for one of them we had a lecture about the history of the city at Queens University, and then the same day after that we went on a tour of the city and got to look at all of the Murals regarding the Protestant and Catholic uprising in Ireland. The murals are all beautiful, I will upload photos as soon as I get them from my friend’s camera (my camera died there).  We also saw the peace wall that separates the Protestants and the Catholics; they have all these powerful messages written on each side of it. The artistry is just amazing, its hard to believe that people can create that! The next port program we got to go to Giants Causeway, which is these natural rock formations that resemble stepping stones, and then the waves would crash up against the rocks and it was epic! You wouldn’t think it was Ireland if you saw it, the beaches looked sort of tropical and they were white sand beaches! And the sun was actually out for once in the UK. We also got to cross a rope bridge that went over crashing waters, which was fairly intimidating since you’re trusting rope and wood to suspend you over jagged rocks and water. But it was still so breathtaking to see how big our world really is, and it’s a privilege to be able to see all of it.  That’s basically how Belfast went for me. It has been one of my favorites out of the 3 ports we’ve been to!

Talk to you soon,

Megan