A North Coast Holiday...

Last week we took a trip up to the North Coast of Northern Ireland, sort of a last hoorah before heading back to the US on Tuesday.  Some sweet friends of ours offered their holiday home to us for a few days in a quaint coastal town called Portstewart.  It was the perfect getaway for us and again reminded us how much we are going to miss this place.  One of our first blog posts from here was from the Giants Causeway on the North Coast, and while we didn't go back there specifically, it was somewhat fitting to visit the same area almost exactly a year later.

View of the cows out the window where we stayed

Our first stop Wednesday was one of Casey's dreams--to play a links course on the sea...The Old Course at Portstewart

Thursday was the only day we had rain on our trip (which is a miracle for here!) but we decided to go to a place called Mussenden Temple. 

Mussenden Temple sits right on the edge of a cliff by the sea. We found out that it actually was intended as a library on a family estate.

Casey standing down below

Here are the ruins of the estate:

 The rest of the day was pretty rainy, but we went to a place called Morelli's in Portstewart and enjoyed coffee and cheesecake by the sea.

Friday was our busiest day and we started by going to Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge.  Fishermen used to cross to a small island for salmon fishing using a rope bridge.  It's now a famous tourist attraction and a place with beautiful views.

View of one of the cliffs toward Ballintoy.

You can see the rope bridge crossing over to the island here.

Crossing the bridge was quite an experience!

Looking down to the chasm below

Casey took pictures of me going over the 2nd time...I squealed the first time

Almost across

 We traveled along the beautiful coastline, but our favorite photo was overlooking White Park Bay...

We then went to Portrush and walked along the beach by the white cliffs....

If you remember our Dunluce castle pictures from last fall, this is the view of the same castle from down below

Harbor at Portush

 We went back to Portrush late in the afternoon and enjoyed a really nice dinner and sunset...

Sorry for the photo overload!!

We really enjoyed our trip to the North Coast and now we're packing up to leave Northern Ireland.  We're sad to leave but glad we had this experience.

Looking forward to more adventures elsewhere...

Walking the Ulster Way....

(Blog title recommended by our friend Adam who was our tour guide to Crawfordsburn Park)

On Sunday afternoon we went to Crawfordsburn Park in East Belfast.  We were surprised at how woodsy and scenic it was.

It had a few open fields full of wildflowers...

But soon we were walking along a wooded path beside water.....

Then this random giant bridge was in one of the clearings.....

Then through the woods some more, we stumbled upon a small waterfall.....

 And then a really big waterfall....

Um, I really like this door....a lot....Adam said it led to Narnia...I wish....

Somewhere along the path we saw a sign that we were walking on the Ulster Way....

Cave Hill Adventure....

This is what we see everyday when we walk to work, school, or church...

The mountain in the distance is Cave Hill, about 5 miles north of where we live.  It is sometimes called Napoleon's nose because if you look at it from the side it looks like a face.  Back in October we took a trip to Belfast Castle which is on the side of the mountain (you can view that trip here: Special Days), but we didn't have the chance to go to the top of Cave Hill then.  So, we both wanted to go back and finally made the trip a few weeks ago.

The trip itself was a fun adventure.  We rode our bikes along the bikepath that follows the Lagan River into the city centre.  We parked our bikes and walked to the bus stop, taking a bus like you see in the above picture all the way to Cave Hill Park.  Then we got to climb the mountain!

Yes, this is why it is called Cave Hill.

There were pretty wildflowers and heather everywhere.

View of McArt's Fort

It was a bit of a hazy day, but this is looking down on the city from McArt's Fort.

After climbing Cave Hill, we went back to the city centre to Starbucks.

The City Hall had the Olympic rings up because Northern Ireland is a part of the UK--the Olympic host country.  I (Autumn) really enjoyed getting to watch the Olympics from a different country especially the host country!  Definitely a different perspective.

Albert Clock

The Fish

These two pictures above are two of Belfast's landmarks.  The Fish has a mosaic of different pictures of people and places, one of them being Albert Clock below.

We had a fun day, and it was nice to take a little adventure around the city....

Summer?

It's August already?

Bare with us while we play catch-up on our summer happenings....

1.  It's been the wettest June and July in the UK ever.  It's also been pretty chilly.  The combination of these two things don't really make it feel like summer, especially when we hear of temperatures that are 40 degrees (F) warmer back home.  There have been more days than I can count when we got soaked walking...not fun.  Because of all the rain, we get slugs....in our house.  That's no fun either.
 One cool thing about the summer here is how long it stays light outside.  We had daylight from about 4am to 11pm in late June.

2.  BBQ--If you're from the South this means an entirely different thing to you than it does here.  Here, a BBQ is like a cookout, and in June we went to one with our fellowship group from church and another for the entire church. 

Here's the one with our fellowship group:

Unfortunately the weather didn't turn out so well for the full church BBQ:

I gave up taking pictures in the monsoon (it rained three hours straight and we had lightning/thunder for the first time since we've been here), but despite the rain, it was a nice time--there was a giant teepee, a bouncy castle, ice cream truck, archery, and other things as well. 

We have thoroughly been blessed by our church here.  They have loved us, befriended us, fed us, given us rides, let us borrow bikes, taken us to concerts and to see places around the country, and given us countless cups of tea and coffee.  We just cannot thank them or say enough about all of them.  We fully did not expect to find a church that felt so much like home to us here, but it really has been a haven and has helped us grow spiritually as well.

3.  Seven words I (Autumn) never expected to say: I work for the Irish Football Association (American friends that means soccer).  It took eight months for me to find a job here, and when I finally did, it was not at a place I expected for two reasons---1. I know pretty much nothing about soccer/football (except to call it football anywhere outside the USA) and 2. I am not Irish (Okay, it might be in my blood somewhere).  The job has been great though and I am really enjoying doing Admin work again.  It's just a temporary four month position, but we are thankful for God's provision of a job while we're here.

4.  Casey has been working hard on his thesis and as of yesterday has 15,000 out of 20,000 words completed!  He has to turn it in mid-September, so continue to pray for him as he finishes strong.  With Casey finishing his paper, we have been planning our next moves and over the summer we decided we will head back to the US on October 2nd.  We are looking forward to seeing family, but are sad to leave our friends here in Northern Ireland.

Okay, I think we're caught up.... :)

Visit to Londonderry and the Queen's Jubilee....

So I'm a month behind on this, but at the beginning of June we had a holiday to celebrate the Queen of England here and we spent the day with some other friends from church visiting the city of Londonderry/Derry.

Londonderry, or as it is also known, Derry, is the oldest fully intact walled city in Europe.

The walls surround the entire central part of the city.  In the center of the city is a diamond shaped roundabout with four main streets jutting off of it.  Up on the city walls we visited St. Columb's cathedral (below)

Inside St. Columb's cathedral

Each pew had hand-carved wood on the ends.  We were told that each one was different.  Amazing!

I mentioned the holiday for the Queen....well, we just missed the celebration for her at the cathedral, but we did get in on the tea time....

So yeah, the Queen....she's sort of a big deal around here.  This year is her 60th year on the throne, so she gave everyone a holiday to celebrate, which was pretty nice of her.  While the Queen was celebrating big in England in early June (when we were in Londonderry), she did make an appearance here in Northern Ireland two weeks ago as part of her big Diamond Jubilee.  Unfortunately, we didn't actually see her, but she was five minutes from our house!!

So enough about the Queen.....here's more of Derry....

 Londonderry has a really interesting history that is rather hard to explain, but there was a time called the Troubles in the 1970s and 80s when Catholics and Protestants didn't get along here in Northern Ireland.  There were a lot of problems in Derry.  Below is the Peace Bridge which is a footbridge across the River Foyle that connects the East and West sides of the city.  It just opened last year to bring the city together.

As you can tell we learned a lot of history and had a full day touring the city.  Thanks to our friends Nigel and Carolyn for a fun day and for taking us to see the Gettys in concert that night!!!

Casey with our friends Nigel and Carolyn

A Place Called Kilkeel....

We've mentioned before that we've met a lot of nice people here....

Our friends from church, Adam and Lynn, invited us to visit their hometown, Kilkeel, for a weekend.  Kilkeel is near the sea and  Mourne Mountains (where I was in the previous post).  Adam and Casey had been trying to go golfing together for months somewhere around Belfast, so that sort of sparked the trip for all of us to go down to Kilkeel for the weekend.

We stayed at Lynn's parents' house where we learned to play Rummikub on Friday night.  Sadly, the guys won all three rounds...

On Saturday Adam and Casey went golfing and Lynn and I went to a butterfly house and garden!

There were peacocks roaming around the garden!

Bluebells!

I wish I could've had a wedding photo at this little spot...love love love!

Then Lynn took me to Kilkeel harbour and to see Green Castle!

 I wish I had more pictures of the countryside in Kilkeel because there are tons of sheep and rolling green hills.  I did manage to get one....

After that, we met the guys and went to a place called Silent Valley.....

Silent Valley is a reservoir in the Mourne Mountains.  It was a bit cloudy but still beautiful.  The craziest thing happened while we were there.  We asked some people walking by if they would take a picture of the four of us, and after getting the photo we started to chat about where we were from.  The lady who took the photo was from North Carolina like us, but not only that, her husband taught at Southeastern just before we were there!  About that time, her husband walked up and we all had a chat, but it was really strange to be up in the mountains in Northern Ireland and meet people from home!  It really is a small world!

We had a great time with Adam and Lynn and loved seeing another part of the country.