The Giant’s Causeway is huge area of basalt columns, all squeezed together. It is located in Country Antrim in Northern Ireland, which is about an hour drive from Belfast. The legend is that an Irish giant named Finn MacCool, was challenged to a fight by a Scottish giant, who lived right across the North Channel. Finn built all the columns so that the two could meet and duke it out.

The causeway was beautiful! The causeway was breathtaking! The causeway was a sight like no other!

These are just some of the words that I wish I could actually use to describe it. Unfortunately, we didn’t get anywhere near the causeway.

What was supposed to be a day filled with exploring the Giant’s Causeway, seeing the Carrickfergus Castle (which I guess to be fair, we did stop there first but it was just too cold, windy, and snowy to really take it all in) and ending with whiskey tasting at the Bushmill’s distillery, was instead spent on a tour bus. A tour bus with no heat, or bathroom. A tour bus stuck in the mountains somewhere in the middle of the worst snowstorm Northern Ireland had seen in 50 years. FOR SIX HOURS. Mountain rescuers had to come and bulldoze our bus out, shuttle people (four at a time) to a nearby bar, where a small bus came to pick us up and drive us back to Belfast. I can’t even make this stuff up!

That wasn’t exactly my idea of a great vacation day. Was I pissed? HELL YEAH! I was tired, hungry, thirsty, and cold – pretty sure my toes were on the verge of being frostbitten. On top of that, this whole ordeal made me and my friends miss our train from Belfast back to Dublin, which of course was the last train of the night because why wouldn’t it be? Spending another night in Belfast wasn’t even an option. The hotel we were staying at was already fully booked for the night. They tried calling other hotels in the area, which were also fully booked. The only thing available was one of those vacation apartments, which we went to check out and it was only slightly less scary than the movie, “Hostel.” Okay, that might be a bit over-exaggerated but you get the picture. So we ended up paying a £130 (or $200 USD) cab ride back to Dublin, since we had already paid for a hotel there.

But now looking back, it really wasn’t that serious. We were lucky that the bus driver/someone on the bus even had a signal to reach out for help. There were certain areas with 12-15 ft snowdrifts, thousands of people without power and trapped from said snowdrifts, and even a few deaths. So I guess I’m trying to say that I’m thankful, because there are worse things could have happened. Now, it’s just another story for me to tell.

So for those of you living in NYC and are complaining about all the snow we’ve been getting – unless you have ever been caught in a snowstorm of this magnitude, you ain’t seen nothing yet!