Okay, back to our frozen tour of the north coast of Northern Ireland. Once we had finished off our tasty lunch, we boarded the bus again and were off to the distillery. It was only a short ride and suddenly we were in the parking lot ready to get off the bus. Ms. Kitty and I happily trotted into the main lobby area, traded in our tour bus tickets for the green coloured tour cards and waited for our group to begin the tour. It only took a few minutes, long enough for me to take a few dozen photos of the lobby area. Then we met our guide, a nice older gentleman that of course I forgot to write down his name. We’ll call him Mr. Whiskey. So the distillery that we visited was the Bushmill’s Distillery. It is the oldest legal distillery in Ireland, and it even is
said to have roots back to~ 1200's for being a distillery. We were warned in advance to turn off all cell phones, take no photos and snuff out any smoking things. The alcohol vapor in the buildings was quite high and they didn’t want us to ignite the building with a phone call. Luckily, neither of us had a cell phone with us. But I was sorely upset that I had to turn my cameras off. Sigh. Our first stop was the mash room. We walked up a great steel ladder to the tops of huge stainless steel cylinders the size of small trucks. In this room the mixed the mash of malts and pumped in the yeast from the other side of the room. It smelled of a bittersweet alcohol, and was definitely pungent. We then moved on to the next room, the distillery room. I did have a question regarding the mono-clonal communities of the yeast, how they kept the yeast alive and prevented any microbial contamination. Ms. Kitty rolled her eyes and declared that I was a geek wherever I traveled (um, yes, was there a different thought??). So back down another set of stairs to the distillery room where huge copper kettles that reached from floor to ceiling were positioned about. There was also a central “control room” looking area where the whiskey was pumped through to test for purity. Since it is all triple distilled, they keep a very close watch on it. Also, all of the “spirit safes” were padlocked to prevent theft or manipulation by unsavory folk. Mr. Whiskey told us how the UK takes a huge portion of tax from the actual sales of the whiskey that the owners barely break even. I guess he was trying to make sure we all bought some before we left to support their business.Off we were, outside, across the parking lot area to the barrel room. We walked in, still unable to take photos, and looked at the huge wooden casks used to mature the whiskey. Most of the casks come from wine or other alcohol producers in various places such as the US. This way the whiskey takes up the flavour of the wood and the previous alcohol. While we were inside, we started to hear a loud banging sound on the roof. We had avoided a quick hailstorm that was dumping tons of hail outside as we stood there. Unfortunately the next group was also waiting behind us and we needed to walk outside and back across the lot to the bottling room. But since it was so bad, we waited a while. I decided this was the perfect chance to ask the microbiology questions burning in my mind. Unfortunately the reply I got from Mr. Whiskey was, “I’m not a chemist I don’t know anything about that.” Chemist huh? Wow, chemistry not microbiology? Sigh. Luckily the hail let up enough that we could leave the building. We ran across the lot to the next building, getting pelted with hail the size of tic tacs and made it there relatively safe. Inside, we saw the whole bottling operation, the lines of bottles, the bottle washers and the packaging area. It kinda reminded me of the opening sequence to Laverne & Shirley, only whiskey not beer.
At the close of the walking tour, Mr. Whiskey asked if there were any volunteers, Ms. Kitty’s hand shot up so fast I thought she was going to take someone out. She and 3 other alcoholics, I mean whiskey connoisseurs, were chosen to be taste testers in our next and last stop. They had a table all ready to go, with
small shot glasses filled with not only different types of whiskey made at Bushmill’s, but also from other companies. She did her absolute best, tested with all her heart and was awarded a certificate to be an official whiskey taste tester! Yep, she should be framing that puppy on the wall right next to her graduate degree… I, being of course her wonderful traveling companion, snuck in and tasted them all too after the crowd left. I actually liked one of them, the Bushmill’s original, I don’t normally like whiskey.After getting our fill of alcohol, we meandered through the gift shop; it was between the tasting hall and the exit door so we had no choice. Nice how businesses do that. I was in search for a hat. My head was cold, I was cold and I wanted a nice warm hat to help hold the heat in. I found one I liked. It was bright red, knitted and had a little liner inside. Then I looked at the price, 40 Pounds! Which is like $80 USD! Oh my gosh! I was so not going to pay that much money for a hat! I did end up buying some honeycomb candy. It was billed as a traditional Irish candy made out of honey (hence the name). Quite tasty but super sweet. I could only eat a bit of it. So, I made my way out to the bus, leaving Ms. Kitty abandoned in the store to finish her purchases. We were again being late to the bus. I snapped a few pictures, walked to the bus to find Darrin hanging out by the bus telling me to hurry up. I told him Ms. Kitty was still buying stuff, but was in line to pay so she should be coming any second. I know, I lied. She was still deciding on which print to buy as I ditched her in the store. But she did show up more quickly than I thought. And yes, this time she was THE last person to get on the bus. Oh well. She had some lovely purchases and more honeycomb candy.
We were off again, this time to the Giant’s Causeway. This is a natural phenomenon where hexagonal lava stones are protruding out of the ground and out towards the sea. These same stones can be found in Scotland on the other side of the water. There is a legend that goes like this: an Irish giant named Fionn mac Cumhaill (or Finn McCool) built a stone causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart, Benandonner. Legend tells that Finn McCool began to walk across the causeway but fled after seeing how huge Benandonner was. He asked his wife to disguise him as a baby. When Benandonner saw the size of the 'infant', of which he assumed to 
be of the giant father, Fionn, he fled home in terror, tearing up the causeway on his way back in case Fionn followed him. In any case, the place looked cool. The stones were stacked high on ground and were lower in the water. Unfortunately, the weather was super bad and Ms. Kitty was worried I’d be swept away by a rogue wave if I walked out onto the stones, so I took photos instead. It was really cool, and I will have to go back to check out the stones in calmer weather. We also stopped here to go through the three gift shops, yes I said three. Because you can’t just have all the trinkets in one shop! I found a hat! I bought a black yarn, Thinsulate lined hat for 3 Pounds! I was so happy that I refused to take off the hat ever again that day. Even when Ms.
Kitty demanded I take the hat off for a photo, I adamantly refused. I was warm now and I was going to stay that way! Ah happy now, ears not falling off, cold rebuffed from my head. We were there only for a little while as the time was ticking away and we had to reboard the bus to begin our trip back to Belfast. Our tour was over. But we enjoyed every minute of it, freezing cold or not. We rode back peacefully; I curled into a tight ball in the back seat with my back to the window and fell asleep. Ms. Kitty said I was asleep within five minutes of the bus pulling away.We arrived back into Belfast and were dropped off near the Grand Opera House, nice from the outside but we never were able to get back for a tour. Our first goal, since it was again cold with rain and snow coming down was to go get some food! Our first choice was the Crown Liquor Saloon, but unfortunately they had ceased dinner operations. We tried the Hotel
Europa across the street in hopes we could find a different restaurant. The concierge informed us the restaurant we wanted was on the other side of town. So we walked back out into the snow/rain mix and went directly to Robinsons Bar to order dinner. The restaurant was pretty, had comfy couch seats and large portions of food. Too bad the food tasted, well let me re-phrase that, too bad the food had no taste! Ugh. We ate it anyway and then headed back to our hotel. Tomorrow we will just walk around Belfast, maybe finish the Titanic walking tour, go shopping some more or just enjoy ourselves. It had been a long but wonderful day and we would sleep quite well, yes, quite.
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