Ireland: Thank God for free healthcare

We woke up at 7:45 this morning and stumbled off to breakfast. After eating, we helped them clean up the camp and packed ourselves lunches for the day. Our bus driver for the day showed up around eleven to take us to Belfast.

The first thing we did was go to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. We walked down a long path that led to a rickety rope bridge suspended about 80 feet above the water. The bridge moved as you crossed the 60 foot wide gap between the mainland and the island. It wasn’t as rickety as I hoped it would be though. It was like crossing a playground bridge.

Waiting in line for the bridge

Still waiting...

We started the hike back and Amanda fell down on the path. We had to run and track down the bus and ice for her because she was crying in pain. Once they managed to help her limp off the path, we decided she needed to go to the hospital, so we dropped her off.

The makeshift splint

Then we continued on to the Giant’s Causeway, which wasn’t anything like I expected. The rocks weren’t nearly as pretty as I had hoped. We climbed around on them though and took pictures of the coast while we were there before we went to the main building gift store.

We got back on the bus and headed to Dunluce Castle, which was actually just a remnant of what used to be a castle. Part of it had actually fallen in the water. We met a group of Girl Guides who are from the area and they walked around the remnants with us.

We went to their campsite down the road and they served us dinner. We had chicken with buns, corn on the cob, multiple flavors of ice cream, and chocolate cake. It was kind of weird because the girls could only cook so much at once, so they just kind of watched us eat. After dinner, we showed the girls our patches. They put theirs on camp blankets. I think that is much more useful in terms of display.

We had to leave them to pick Amanda up from the hospital. It turns out that she sprained her ankle. She is supposed to stay off it for 48 hours, but they didn’t give her crutches, so that should be interesting. Apparently their free health care only extends to walking aids if something is broken.

We came back to camp in order to do our clean up chores to prepare for the morning. I vacuumed the room with a cute miniature vacuum named Henry. We swept the hallway too and now we can’t do anything else until tomorrow.