Last Day and Night in Belfast
After spending another fascinating night at Toni’s, talking into the wee hours, Saturday morning was a beautiful day. We’d been really fortunate during our three weeks in Belfast to have mostly clear weather with seasonally warm temperatures. But the weather here can change in a heartbeat from sunny and bright to pouring rain, and then to hail or even snow, and then right back to shining sunlight.
Chickey was so sweet to offer to drive us to Newcastle, a popular seaside resort. He took Toni, Mary, Jessica and me on a tour of the magnificent countryside, dotted with sheep and full of early signs of Spring. We passed through several lovely villages.
Then we got to Newcastle, which is a lovely town. It’s filled with shops and restaurants, beautiful churches, plus other attractions for families, like amusement rides on the beach.
We returned to Toni and Chickey’s house and Toni, Mary, Jessica and I had tea and a stupendous discussion about our experiences in GX and what we learned from each other.
That night, we went to the Farset International Hostel to prepare for our return home, since we had to be at the airport at 5:00 AM (which really meant leaving at 3:30 AM because of the daylight savings time change). Some of our GX friends came to bid us farewell.
Right after we returned to L.A. from Belfast, they had snow blizzards and gale winds that created power outages and chaos in certain areas. I feel so lucky to be living in a city that has nearly perfect weather year-round, although temporarily experiencing the cold weather and diverse conditions also makes life more spicy. Still, having spent most of my life surviving the cold winters of New York and also Boston, there’s no place like L.A. as my home!
