The End of the Cruise

Our third stop was Cozumel, Mexico. Paul and I joined the rest of his family at a morning beach break. This particular beach included a huge inflated floating play structure out in the water. Apparently Paul wiped out a few times. He tells me it was very slippery - uh huh. There were also several pools, some water slides, and free food and drinks (yay for virgin pina coladas!). It was the perfect way to spend our third and final stop.

We had one final day at sea before the cruise ended. I gave the rock climbing wall a go. While I didn't make it to the top, I made it past halfway, so I consider that a success:

My mother-in-law also gave it a go and got just as far as I did.

Paul and his sister also tried out the Flow Rider. Paul stayed up for over a minute, and then kind of had to decide to wipe out to give the next person a turn. Most people make it only a few seconds. Sometimes it's hard not to hate him a tiny bit. Then again, I didn't try it, so who knows, I might have been amazing. Ha!

Giant's Causeway

To see Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, we took trains back to Dublin and then north to Portrush.  The trains in Ireland radiate out from Dublin, so you have to go back through Dublin to go northward.  There are buses but they take just as long as the trains and would have cost us money.  The trains were covered by our Eurail pass.

Portrush is a popular beach getaway town, so we spent a little time on the beach our first evening:

We also saw this huge cruise ship with sails - pretty crazy!

The next day, we went to Giant's Causeway.  The hexagonal rocks are neat!

It was hard to get pictures without other tourists - there were many:

After some time at this very touristy area, we started walking along a path along the edge of the cliff... and just kept going.  We walked 4.8 miles to the next bus stop, realized the next bus wasn't for an hour, and walked the 4.8 miles back.  It was a beautiful walk:

Paul claimed the cliff (I think he's really gotten confused about Carcassonne)

We brought a small picnic lunch and ate it while enjoying the beautiful view:

We were walking along farmland, and these cows were nice enough to pose for a picture:

 The sky cleared up a bit when we were just about finished with our walk:

I continued to try to conquer my fear of heights by standing far out on a promontory:

Okay, okay, to get out to the last little bit (which isn't actually represented in this photo), I had to put my hands on either side of my eyes like blinders for a horse.  But I made it, dangit!

And because I can't help myself, just one more photo (we took a bazillion, it's so hard to choose!)

And finally, on our way back to Portrush, we stopped by the very picturesque Dunluce castle: