Giant’s Causeway and Whiskey
::sigh:: I am at last back at Christie’s in North Wales. Tomorrow I will be getting on the plane home. Never again will I go away for 3 weeks, it’s just not long enough; month minimum. That being said after all this rain, I am ready to get back to the beach. I can’t wait to lay out in the sun all day long when I get back. Oh it will be so nice.
So, last you read I was in Belfast doing laundry which ended up taking all freakin day cause the dryer didn’t work all that well.
The next day, I got up to go on the day tour of Ulster, or Northern Ireland. I had met an Italian girl the day before named Valeria and she was also going on this tour. She didn’t speak a lot of English but she wanted me to help her with that. She had that Italian accent that’s just awgh ::drool:: so sexy. It’s like say, “I’m a little teapot.” I love it! Anyway, we spent the day together going across northern Ireland. We went up to the Giant’s Causeway which was a large group of pillar like rocks in different hexagonal and pentagonal shapes. It’s was quite interesting to see. Apparently, they do from there down into the ocean floor and then come up again ion another island somewhere. Ancient explorers noted this and said it was built as a causeway by giants so that they could conquer Ireland, but the giant was tricked and went running back to where he came from, destroying the causeway in his wake so that no one could follow.
We also went to Bushmills distillery which is the oldest licensed distillery in the world, since 1608. I learned all about whiskey, the process of distilling, and the differences between liquors.
Basically, whiskey is distilled three times, scotch twice, and bourbon once. Distilling is when they take the spirits produced by the fermented and malted barely and mix it pure hot water. Alcohol boils at a much lower temperature then water, so the alcohol evaporates into these pipes and is turned back into liquid in these condensers, then they do this twice more. What this does is purify the alcohol.
The avg level of purification after the first distillation is about 20% alcohol, after second distillation, it is 75%, and then around 88% on the last one. It smelled horrible in that distillery too. You actually couldn’t use anything with batteries cause there was so much alcohol in the air, the slightest spark could ignite it.
The whiskey is then stored in caskets and this is what mainly gives the different flavors. Most whiskey is stored in a casket that once had sherry wine in it and so the sherry is soaked into the whiskey a bit, other whiskey is put into bourbon caskets and so on for different flavors. AS it sits for sometimes up to 25 years, about 20% of the alcohol will evaporate and that’s called the “angel’s share.” See, even heaven has alkies.
I had quizno’s for lunch which was soo good to have after constant noodles. We saw some other sites, but the majority of the day was spent talking to Valeria and teaching her English. She is studying in Dublin and was up to Belfast just for the week. She was headed back to Dublin the next day and invited me to a party that night. At first I was excited but then realized I’d already booked my 3 day tour, so oh well. Women are always trouble anyway. 
She gave me her email and phone number and I said I’d call her when I got into Dublin.
After the tour, I caught a bus down to Dublin to stay for the night before the 3 day long tour the next morning. I don’t really like to take such tours anymore, cause you don’t really get a sense of the culture and you’re totally at the mercy of the bus driver and tour guide. No hop on hop off. The tour was actually entertaining despite the guide’s compulsion to repeat himself and be distracted, but I don’t think I’ll ever do another one.
There was free breakfast downstairs which consisted of toast and jam so I ate, mailed off some postcards, got some cash (I needed euros now that I was in Ireland), and got on the bus. There was almost 40 of us on the bus. The majority of the group was fun, but there were four girls and two guys from SC who were studying abroad, and these weren’t the fun types. Despite our connections with USC, we had nothing else in common. They were what I would describe as plastics, otherwise known as b!#che$. Not fun at all. They had their hair all done, with huge shades, furry like coats, and of course Louie Vatoghne bags. Louie Vatoghne! Backpacking!! Argh makes me so frustrated. Anyway, thankfully, there were enough cool people that I didn’t have to deal with them, just made me ashamed of where I went to school.
Anyway, first place we went to was the second oldest whiskey distillery in the world, but since I had already gone to the oldest one, I skipped out on paying for this one and wondered around the little town instead and talked to our tour guide. He was a young Irish lad who had a hankering for binge drinking and pointing out “sexy” tractors.
Hmm, I’ve just been told that this computer is quite old and slow and might actually crash, so I’m going to go ahead and send this and then continue to update on subsequent emai