5 posts tagged “northern ireland”
After I had recovered my composure about my second potential nude sleepwalking venture, we headed out of town, stopping at the glorious beach. Way too cold to swim, of course, but lovely to walk along:
There are many more where that came from, but I feel I've been overselling these murals. Finally, reluctantly, we left Derry and Northern Ireland. You could tell immediately when you crossed the border into the Republic, as the road got suddenly much narrower and shittier. We stopped in a supermarket for supplies right before Donegal and saw this notice by the bathrooms:
My greatest travel story ever has to be from Buenos Aires, two and a half years ago. It was H's birthday, but as we were getting up really early the next day to head to Uruguay, we had a fairly early night and didn't drink too much. The next thing I remember, I'm having a weird dream about walking naked in the hallway. I really, really have to pee and it's really bright. I start walking down the hall outside our room until I see a guy in uniform (hotel employee) down the hall and I stop and walk back. It is then that I realize that this is not a dream. I am actually walking down the hall in Buenos Aires naked. As I start to wake up, and the horror of the reality sets in, I start banging on our door to be let in. H is sleeping soundly and I'm vaguely aware that the guy is asking me if I need some help and I tell him this is my room. He didn't come very close, but I'm sure he saw plenty. Finally I hear our room phone ringing and H saying that yes, there is someone knocking on the door and he will go answer it, but his first reaction was apparently, "Yes, there is someone knocking on the door, could you make them go away please?" I get back in bed and we go back to sleep, I pray that this is just a dream and I will laugh about it in the morning. Next day arrives, and nope, it was no dream. As far as I can explain, I must have been sleep walking, which I have never done in my life, and must have gotten up to go to the bathroom and opened the wrong door. What boggles me is how I did this asleep, as the door was heavy and probably deadbolted from inside. I was grateful that we were checking out that day and no one was giggling at me in the lobby, but I'm sure the story got around. It has to be the most random thing that has ever happened to me and every time we think about it, we crack up laughing. H said to me, "You realize that's most people's worst nightmare, right?" Fortunately it was the middle of the night, as a few hours later an entire tour group was getting up to check out and the hallway would have been crowded with people.
As I said, I'd never to my knowledge sleep walked before and I never did it again. Until Portrush. After we left the pub that night, I remember getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. This time, I had the presence of mind to put on my fleece, but, uh, nothing else. Though our bedroom had an en-suite bathroom and I was unable to unlock the door even wide awake, I remember going out of the room and down the stairs. Somehow, I found a bathroom not attached to a bedroom, and went back to bed. The next morning, I told H that I was fairly certain that I had sleep walked again. He thought it was just a dream, due to my recollection of the events and the fact that I opened the door and re-locked it. As we went down to breakfast, I noticed a hallway with several doors separating it from the main part of the house, a hallway we had never been in. I told him, "I bet you that there is a bathroom in that hallway, separate from a bedroom." Guess what? There was. Fortunately, this time no one was a witness and no one at breakfast looked at me in sheer horror or threw me out. But again, we were fortunately about to check out, and I hightailed it out of there before anyone asked any questions.
Maybe I should start packing pajamas?
So...I left off at the Carrick a Rede rope bridge and my imminent death. Actually approaching the bridge and seeing how high it was above the water, I started to get quite a bit nervous, but I was determined to do it. The guide/ticket collector told me it took her several days of trying before she could cross it and not it ain't no thing. My strategy involved: no other people on the bridge to make it bounce, looking straight ahead and not down or to my sides, and a low center of gravity. To wit:
Our first stop out of Belfast was the charming town of Glenarm, where we stopped for food and ATM. Very picturesque:
Before leaving Belfast, we decided to have a stroll around the (amazingly stinky) river and check out East Belfast, where we saw, wait for it...more murals!
Another peace line:
On our way out of the city (actually, it was the opposite direction, but not far from Belfast), we went to the awesome Ulster Transport Museum. With tons of old cars, trains, motorcycles, and some Titanic stuff, I called it the zoo for boys, but actually I was more excited to go than H! I took a gazillion photos of everything, which proved less interesting when I looked at them later, but here are some highlights:
The De Lorean, another Belfast product, looks way uglier in person. Ah, the 80s, they thought it looked really cool:
For the Deadwood fans:
We planned to drive up the Antrim coast, loosely following the route taken by my esteemed former colleague, and land somewhere for the night in either Portrush or Londonderry. If I had it all to do again, we would have spent more time enjoying the glens of Antrim and the coast, rather than just trying to get from point A to point B before dark.
Paranoid I might lose this, so posting...
