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The piece of land known as Northern Ireland appears very much to be a part of Ireland, but is in fact part of the United Kingdom. It used to be attached to the west coast of Scotland, but many years ago, great gusts of hot air from Henry VIII pushed it across the sea, killing all the native Americans living there, along with other protected species. Because all the road signs were British and all the prices were marked in pounds, the Irish who moved in decided it would just be easier to pretend the new chunk of land was still attached to Scotland. That way, they get a simpler religion but don't have to wear skirts. This made the other Irish mad, which naturally led to lots of bombings. It's calmer now, and we wore pants the whole time.

Our seven day trip began in Dublin, but we headed north right away.

(Day 2: 14 June) Our first site to see was day two: the Giants' Causeway. This is an odd rock formation, and one of the main reasons we wanted to see Northern Ireland and north Ireland instead of the more popular south Ireland. With those expectations, it's not surprising we were a little disappointed; it's just not as grand as we thought. After we got over our unreasonable expectations, the Giants' Causeway was fun. We were able to see it from both up close and up high, since we hiked back along a ridge overlooking the Causeway.

After that, it was back to the Catholics and their euros: click here for the rest of our trip.