Long overdue..

Hello y'all

I know, it's been over a week since my last blog.. I'm sorry for that, but here's what happened since then.

On sunday we took a train to Portrush, a little town at the ocean. It was a train ride of 2 hours, but with 10 other Erasmus students it was over in no time :-)
When we arrived there, around 11 am, we made our first pitstop in a coffee shop the get some new energy for the day :-)
From the beginning we were amazed by the beautiful ocean view!
After our coffee stop we started walking to the coast, a little climb to end up on top of a cliff with glashing wild water at the bottom.
AMAZING! BEAUTIFUL! PEACEFUL! And not the forget: SUNSHINE!!! Yes we picked out a perfect day! As I told you before, there rarely is a day without rain! But on sunday: sun sun sun!!
Of course, on top of the cliffs it was very windy and therefore not that warm, but we didn't care at all, a little sunshine makes everybody instantly happy :-D

So we walked over the cliffs and took MANY pictures; of the water, of each other, of the endless view...

If you look closely, at the 'back' you can see the Giant's Causeway,
where we're going to hike to :-)

After a little lunch break, we (Viola, Jennifer and myself) decided to walk to the Giant's Causeway.
The Giant's Causeway, renowed for its polygonal columns of layered basalt, is the only World Heritage Site in Northern Ireland, so it must be worth seeing :-D
And so we started on a, what we thought, 5 mile hike (around 8km). The most beautiful walk ever! We couldn't stop taking pictures along the way (I think I took over 500 pictures during the day).

And so the journey began! 

Dunluce Castle 

Some company :-)

Dunluce Castle

Dunluce Castle

Imagine living here!!!

There were also some obstacles :-)

Love how the water splashes against the rocks! 

Our destination in sight!

But we had to keep going, around 5 O'clock it starts to get dark and we wanted to reach the Giant's Causeway before it got dark, of course. But it felt as if there was no end to our walk...
Finally, 4 hours and 2 fall-downs later (yes it was very slippery and yes I fell down TWICE :-p ), we could see our destination :-)
Apparently for the last part you can take a little shuttle bus, so we asked the driver how much it was and for how long he drives (it was 5pm by then).
But he was about to start his last 'round' so we decided not to go to the Giant's Causeway 'cause apparently the last bus that would take us the the train station left in 10 minutes... :-(
We found our bus stop and waited for the bus......  that would never come....
The bus driver from the shuttle bus told us that the last bus was at 17.12, but he forgot that it was sunday and not a weekday. So the last bus on a sunday is at 16.30... Soooooooo, we were a bit screwed..
Luckily the people here are so friendly, when the bus driver saw us sitting at the bus stop (by that time we hadn't noticed that the hours are different on a sunday, we thought that the bus was just a wee bit late) he offered to take us to the next little town, maybe we would have more luck there getting a bus to the train station.
But he ended up driving us to the train station! We were very happy of course!! Otherwise we probably ended up hitch-hiking or something..

Our lifesaver!

Oh right, remember when I said that we started on a 5 mile hike, or so we thought so...? The reason why our hike seemed like never ending was because in fact it was at least a 7 mile hike. And that's when you follow the main road, we followed the coast line which was much more curved and therefore probably more like 8 miles (around 12 km)....
But it was worth it! I mean, we didn't see the Giant's Causeway, but that's not going anywhere.. And on the 26th of february we go there on a trip with school, so then we'll see it. And for now we have some beautiful pictures and a great memory of our walk!


The days after that nothing much happened, I went to school, followed classes... But I got a wee bit sick on monday, so when I didn't HAVE to go outside I stayed in..


The school is organizing 3 trips on wednesdays afternoons, all based on European Integration.
Last wednesday was the first trip, we went to Lisburn and Hillsborough.
In Lisburn we first took a walk through the castle gardens.
Castle Gardens is the most historic open space in Lisburn. It was once the site of Lisburn castle, a 17th Century fortified manor house first built by the Conways, the landlords of Lisburn, in the 1620's. The house and its contents were destroyed by the great fire of Lisburn in 1707 and not rebuilt. The estate continued in the hands of descendants of the Conway family, including Sir Richard Wallace. After his death and that of Lady Wallace, the gardens were gifted in 1903 to Lisburn for use as a public park
The preliminary renovation of the Gardens included archaeological excavations on the site. These uncovered many artefacts and important 17th century garden features including a double flight staircase and a gazebo. Some of the artefacts found in the Gardens can be viewed at Lisburn Museum with displays explaining their historical context and significance.
The top part of the gardens dates from late Victorian times and contains several important scheduled historic monuments, including the 1677 red sandstone gateway, the Wallace drinking fountain and the memorial erected in 1891 to commemorate Lisburn's landlord and great benefactor, Sir Richard Wallace (1818 - 1890). The Gardens also provide a splendid setting for the town's memorial to the First and Second World Wars.
(As many of you know, I'm not a good historian, so I copied part of this from the website from the Castle Gardens. This way you get a good description of what it was and now is :-) )

After this we went to the museum in Lisburn.
In this museum you can see the heritage of craft skills in the daily demonstrations of hand-spinning and hand loom-weaving and admire the treasured collection of damask linen and costumes.
We saw how they used to make linen, I even got a go at an actual spinning wheel...
Which looked easy when the woman in the museum was doing it, but was actually quiet hard! :-p
We also saw a woman weaving some linen, she is one of the three-ish people who can still use it in Northern-Ireland...

Oldest piece of linen

Flax

A saying that comes from that time:
Spinning a yarn --> Telling a long story
Spinning was a woman's job because you needed to multitask,
and women are just better in that then men ;-)
Another fun fact: on the top you see a red ribbon.
When there was a red or a white ribbon that meant that the girl was single,
a blue or a green ribbon meant that the girl was married.
That way men could easily see which girls were good at their job and still 'available'..

Weaving 

Me giving it a go :-D

After all of that we went to see Hillsborough Fort.
Hillsborough Fort lies just outside the village of Hillsborough in County Down. Set in the beautiful Hillsborough Forest Park and built on the site of the old Magennes stronghold, the Fort was founded in 1630 by Peter Hill and completed around 1650 by Colonel Arthur Hill.
It was constituted a Royal Fort by Charles II.
William of Orange spent several nights at the Fort on his way South to the Boyne in 1690.
The building’s historic significance is still marked in the 21^st Century by the “Hillsborough Old Guard”, a local society which keeps the tradition of the fort alive through re-enactments and events.  There is an official Bugler of the Hillsborough Fort Guard (historically the keepers of the Fort) who plays at ceremonial events. (For a good short description, I also went to a website for information.)
My first impression of this fort was: 'Waauw, this fort is very small!' Especially when you see the huge green space around it.

After the fort we had a look at an old courthouse. It's no longer in use of course, it's now part of a museum. It was very nice to see and hear how it was then. The judges spoke in Latin or in French, so when you were there for some kind of crime you did or didn't do you didn't stand a chance and were send of to Van Diemen's Land, the island we now know as Tasmania, part of Australia.

Near the courthouse is Hillsborough Castle, where the Queen of England still stays a couple of days each year.

Next week: The Belfast Hills to get a panorama of the landscape and to view the European continental impact on the city of Belfast + a meeting with the Lord Mayor and a tour of the City Hall :-)


Yesterday we had an International Evening in school.
The concept was that all the Erasmus students brought some traditional food so we could all have a sample of the different foods.
Normally it was also for the St.Mary's students, but only a handful showed up... Which was a bit of a bummer 'cause the evening was also so that we could come a bit out of our 'Erasmus-bubble' and meet some locals... But none the less, we had a grant evening!

We, me and 2 other Belgians, made Genste Waterzooi (YUMMIE!!).
A short list of the other dishes:
- Spain: tortilla
- The Netherlands: cheese pancakes
- other Belgians: crêpes with nutella and chocolate mousse
- Norway: yellow and brown cheese (very strange, the brown one looked like some kind of fudge, but is was more like a very old cheese)
- Germany: Kässpätzle (a very nice noodle-like dish with cheese and onions)
- Switzerland: Cheese fondue on toast, Swiss chocolate
And then some delicious desserts: AppfelStrüdel, rice-pudding, some kind of small pancake (you can compare it al little with 'poffertjes' I think), cake, some kind of sweet bread, Norwegian chocolate, ...
(I don't remember all of it and don't remember which desserts were of which countries :-/ , but it was all very nice and yummie!!)
The Irish students who were there brought Irish stew, also very good. And they also brought some liqueur for shots. I really loved the 'Baby Guinness', it's Tia Maria with Baileys (it's called a baby Guinness because it looks like a little Guinness :-p ). I didn't try the other ones 'cause they were with peppermint in them.. ( I'm not a fan of drinks with peppermint in them.)

That's 'all' for now :-)

See ya ^^