On Wednesday night was my first visit to Ikea, in north London. It's only taken me three years to get there, but I've done it, and managed to get a good selection of goods for the house. Then on Thursday was Kate's birthday and we celebrated it at Chakalaka in Putney, for another good South African dinner!

Then on Friday we left for our long weekend to Belfast. Why Belfast you ask? Why not? I figured I've been to (Republic of) Ireland a couple of times and Belfast is meant to be quite touristy, so hence our visit to Northern Ireland.

Friday night we had planned a massive pub crawl, starting one side of town and ending the other. Perfect! After getting to the first pub, which was a student pub, we decided to stay on a bit longer, and then longer again, until it landed up closing. So there went the pub crawl option.

On Saturday we had organised a black cab city tour, which was a brilliant way to see the city as well as having a local guide explaining the various suburbs and the pollitcal background behind Belfasts violent past. The wall murals were incredible and much bigger than I originally thought.

Yesterday we had an organised day tour up north to Giants Causeway, via the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and the Old Bushmills Distillery. Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. Most of the columns are hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places.

Today was a slow day, both recovering from the Saturday night life, as well as being our last day. We took a walk over to the Titanic's Dock and Pump-House, and browsed around there. The weather was dreadful, so didn't spend long, just a quick look. From there, back to town, pick up the bags and off to the airport and London bound.