My fifth week in Ireland was quite eventful, as besides my normal internship week, it included a weekend trip to Northern Ireland where we explored Belfast, Derry, and the surrounding areas. My week began with a continuation of my internship at Think Biosolution where I focused on implementing a payment system for the AI Voice Agent. Throughout the week I did research and found that the most efficient to implement it was using a program called Stripe that allowed me to call certain APIs through Postman, a website. My further understanding of these programs made me realize how much background information and resources are used in companies and especially artificial intelligence engineering.
I also experienced the 4th of July in a different country for the first time, which was quite a unique experience since obviously it won’t be celebrated in Ireland. But I was able to get out of work early thanks to my boss on Friday and was still able to have my own 4th of July celebration with friends before our weekend trip to Northern Ireland.
Our trip to Northern Ireland began with a bus ride that was supposed to leave at 7:50 but it had a flat tire so we left UCD around 8:30 AM on Saturday. We drove just about 2 and half hours to the Titanic Museum in Belfast as we crossed over to technically a different country since Northern Ireland is apart of the United Kingdom. The Titanic Museum was very cool, we were able to explore it on our own and is interesting to see the history of the construction of the titanic and what led up to the disaster and the aftermath. There were a bunch of written first-hand accounts of the event that were displayed in the museum and it really gave me a different perspective on some of the victims and survivors of the tragedy. After that we drove into Belfast and stopped at the Political Taxi Tours where we were driven around by a local and heard history about the conflict between the Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast. It was quite sad to hear the amount of death and destruction caused between their feud that has been resolved by the peace wall that we also stopped at. It was quite a first day in Belfast though, as I hung out with my friends at night before the following morning.
Sunday began with a 8 AM bus ride from Belfast to almost the tip of Northern Ireland at the Carricak-a-Rede rope bridge. We drove around an hour up to the rope bridge and walked 20 minutes to some spectacular views of the coastline and the actual bridge. After that we drove over to Giant’s Causeway and had a guided tour before being able to explore ourselves. I personally think the views of the cliffs and coastline here were a contender for the most beautiful on the entire trip so far. After that we had lunch at the Ponderosa on the way to Derry and then stopped at Glenshane county farm. We interacted with a sheep farmer who showed us his work with sheep and training his dogs as his helpers on the farm. It was quite interesting and after that, we were able to get to see and hold some baby lambs in the barn. They were all very cute and I was able to snap a couple of photos with them. We then drove to Derry and explored the city a bit before calling it a night.
Our final day in Northern Ireland included being able to sleep in on a Monday, and no judging justice class since we were not at UCD. At 10:30 we had a guided tour of the city of Derry where a guide told us about the history and about the Derry Walls scattered everywhere. It was a similar situation to what had happened in Belfast but with much older history. We also went to the Free Derry museum to learn about the history of the Free Derry movement and the tragedy that had come from it. A lot of it included the massacre of innocent civilians by British troops that had occurred in the 1960s. After that we had lunch and had some more time to explore the city before departing back to UCD. The trip back took over 3 hours and we arrived back just in time for to just go straight to sleep. This was quite an eventful week where I learned a lot about the history in the cities of Northern Ireland will quite a big interaction in nature as well!
The Belfast Peace Wall
The Rope Bridge at Carrick-a-Rede
The Coast at Giant’s Causeway
Me Holding a lamb at Glenshane County Farm
View from the Derry city Walls
Looks like a great trip to Northern Ireland
Wow! What a great week exploring Ireland. This program is amazing