Day 2 Northern Ireland – Giant’s Causeway – the heart as it is

Since we wanted to save as much money as possible, we decided to rent a car for just 2 days (one day for Giant’s Causeway and another day for Kylemore Abbey).

We took the bus early to grab our rental car near the airport. There were other rental car companies closer to us, but they had earlier return times unfortunately. It was definitely quite the adventure driving on the other side of the road. When it was my turn to drive I had to keep repeating out loud “sharp left, wide right” so I remembered where to go. We also didn’t realize until the day before that Giant’s Causeway is actually in Northern Ireland and that we needed to pay this ‘ETA’ fee to cross into the UK. In any case, here are the photos from the Giant’s Causeway Area.

The Irish tall tale behind Giant’s Causeway is basically 2 giants were fighting and chucking rocks at each other, eventually forming what we see of Giant’s Causeway today. Ted Ed has a really nice video about this here.

When we first arrived to the actual site, they asked if we had a reservation which we did not. We found out that there were actually 2 places to park, one for if you wanted a guided tour and access to a shop and cafe, and another place to park further down for I think 10 pounds. It was also at this time that I found out that all the pounds I brought did not work ! Apparently in the late 2010’s, the UK started printing new versions of pounds. So that sucked. But I was able to still use a credit card, though.

Anyways, here are all photos from that day:

There were all these red balls I would see in the water/tide pools and I later realized they were small anemone-like creatures:

This is the cafe right outside of the Giant’s Causeway area:

We ended up deciding to have lunch at the hotel nearby. The food was only okay:

Also I wanted to share how impressive all the rest stops were if that isn’t too weird of an adjective. There was so much food at the rest stops, and clean and easily accessible bathrooms (along with petrol, of course). It just felt good knowing that there were reliable and consistent rest stops along the freeway.