Haley and I decided on a whim that we wanted to go to Ireland over the weekend. Since ferries going from Liverpool to Dublin were terribly expensive, we decided to go to Belfast instead. Big mistake.
This trip was awful from start to finish.
First off, our accommodation cancelled on us right before we left, so we had to scramble to make other arrangements. We booked a room in the Belfast International Youth Hostel.
When we were on the train from Ormskirk to Liverpool, we realized that the booking confirmation for our ferry tickets were not in my backpack, so we called the office, which said it was closed. Since we were scheduled to be on a ferry in the next two hours, that was troubling to us.
Haley called her mother, who retrieved our reservation number. When we got to Liverpool, we walked down to the waterfront, where we were told to go by one of the Edge Hill staff if we planned on crossing the Irish Sea. There were a few buildings meant for selling tickets, but they were all closed. Without the printed information from the email, we were completely lost.
We asked some workers who were getting off a dock where we were meant to be going, and one of them told us that the place we needed to be was a few miles down the river and that we would need a taxi. We started walking toward the main road to get one when a creepy-as-hell van pulled up beside us. It was one of the workers. He offered us a ride, but we declined. We didn't feel right about it, and we were correct in our hunch.
A few minutes later, another car pulled up, and it was the other worker. He told us that he had looked it up and the other worker's instructions were incorrect, that we needed to be on the other side of the river. We were thoroughly creeped out that the other guy would have offered us a ride when he didn't even know where we were going, so we were glad we refused that offer.
We reached the main road and called a cab, got to the terminal on time, and boarded the ferry. We were unaware that we could have booked cabins, so we had a seven-hour ferry ride ahead of us (from 10:30 am to 6:30 pm) with no place to sleep.
I fell asleep on a couch in the lobby and one of the staff came up and gave us two key cards to a cabin free of charge. It was so, so nice! Unfortunately, I didn't have much in my stomach and spent much of the night sea sick and dry heaving. Not a great time.
We were ordered to get off the ferry around 6:45. No one was there to put us through security or check our passports or anything. We got off the boat and everyone scattered. A taxi was waiting, so we got into that with a few other passengers and rode to the Belfast City Centre. Nothing was open yet except for a coffee shop, so we sat there and tried to construct a game plan. We had breakfast once some other restaurants opened, and then went to the Europa bus station.
We bought day-long bus passes for 3.50, which was very reasonable, and decided to go to the Giant's Causeway first, which has been on my bucket list for years. Unfortunately, when we tried to board the bus, our cards were declined because they were specific to Belfast only. We had to pay 16.50 to upgrade our passes to extend to the whole of Northern Ireland. The bus driver waited for us, though, which was really nice.
We were dropped off in Corelaine to get on a connecting bus. The lady at that bus station was horribly rude. She impatiently informed us that the bus was to leave at 10:50 from Gate B Stand 6; it was Bus 172. We waited in Gate B and stared at Stand 6 until 11:20, and no bus came. We went back to the information window and explained that the bus had not come yet, but she argued with us, saying that it most certainly had been there and we just missed it, which was obviously false. The next one didn't leave until 12:40, so we tried to go into town to get a bite to eat.
Everything was closed except a few shady taverns and a Subway, so we opted for Subway.
We came back, boarded the bus, and finally arrived at Giant's Causeway. The bus driver pointed us in the direction of the bus stop where we could be picked up.
Haley and I were absolutely taken aback by the beautiful scenery. I mean, seriously? Look at this.
Insanely gorgeous. We spent a few hours climbing the rocks and taking in the sea, and then finally made our way back to the bus stop, where we found out that the bus would not return until 6:30. It was only 2:00 then, and we needed to be back in Belfast and checked into our hostel by 9:00, so that wasn't going to work.
We went into the restaurant near the Causeway and called a cab. The driver confused us with a bunch of different options, and ended up dropping us off at a random bus stop in the next town, where the bus to Belfast wouldn't arrive until 7:30. So that was no help.
An old lady pulled over and offered to give us a ride wherever we needed to go, which was so, so sweet, but Haley had already called another cab to take us back to the bus station in Coleraine, where there was no one at the ticket or information windows in the entire building. We ended up buying a train ticket from a security guard and riding a very expensive train back to Belfast.
Once we got there, we walked to KFC, which was near our hostel, ate there, and then headed toward the hostel. It was nothing like the reviews made it out to be. The room was more of a closet, the mirror was cracked, the showers were gross, and the free wifi didn't actually work on my iPod.
After having such a horrible day already, Haley and I decided to take the ferry at 10:30 that night instead of waiting until the morning. Since we had flexi tickets, we only had to pay 20 pounds to switch our booking, which was way better than staying another night. We also splurged and paid for a cabin since it was so much better than sleeping on a couch in the lobby. We couldn't get the hostel room refunded, but we couldn't stand another minute in Belfast.
On our way back to the bus station, we were hit on at least twice by very creepy men, and when we got there, we found out that there were no buses going to the ferry terminal, so we had to get yet another cab there.
Things looked up once we got on the ferry. It was clean and lovely. We bought a cheap set of shampoo/conditioner/shower gel, cleaned up, and used the computer lounge to update our Facebooks.
In the morning, we met a very nice Englishman in the terminal. He talked with us for almost an hour about health care and the economic/political situation in the U.S. We took a bus from the terminal to the train station in Liverpool.
Just our luck: the train wasn't running to Ormskirk this morning because of engineering work. We would have to get off at Aintree and take a bus back. The rail replacement bus was late, but it was a double decker, which was cool. The worst part was that there were two girls clearly just getting back from a night of partying and they were still drunk, loud, and giggly. Haley and I were already irritable from our terrible weekend, so we could have strangled them.
The bus dropped us off at the train station, and it seemed like it took forever for us to walk back to campus, but we got there by 9:30, went right to sleep, and didn't wake up until 5:30.
Classes start this week, though, so that gives me something to look forward to. I'm just grateful that this weekend is over. I'm exhausted and still lagging from our irregular sleep schedule.
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