Ireland-2019 (Irish Humor)

The Irish have a wonderful sense of humor.

Tonight we are staying at The Mont in Dublin.  This is Monte, the hotel mascot.

The Irish may understand American history better than we do:

The Bobbsey Twins: Donald and Boris

This one applies universally:

Sign in the women's loo:

Sign in the men's loo:

Ireland-2019 (Guinness)

The Irish love their Guiness.  I made this collection of Guinness advertisements we ran into all around the island.  Excuse the poor quality, as we were sometimes rushed and/or they were in hard to photograph places.

Ireland-2019 (Belfast and the end of our tour)

It's our last day, and this is Susie Millar, our tour guide talking to us about the Titanic.  The ship was built in Belfast, the largest ship building city in the world at the time.  She is standing in front of a memorial to all those who died when the ship went down.  Susie's story is personal, and she waited until today to tell it.

Susie's great-grandfather, Thomas helped build the Titanic.  A recent widower, he signed on as a deck engineer on the ship, hoping to find a home in America for his two sons.  He left Susie's grandfather the two coins you see here, telling him not to spend them until they meet again.

Susie has written a book about it and has been instrumental in helping families reconnect with their Titanic roots. 

There is an irony to this whole story.  Susie was recently married to David, an American economist, and now she is struggling to get a Green Card so she can work in the US.  The present political climate is making that very difficult.  Luckily, David just got a work permit from Ireland.  We hope it all works out for them.

  

The bad times in Northern Ireland are over for now, but there are many murals in the city depicting conflicts around the world.  They are changed on a regular basis.  There is still a wall in the city separating two areas with very different cultural identities.  Fortunately this represents only a small part of the Belfast population.

Belfast has a great exhibit in City Hall where you can learn all kinds of things about it's history and culture.  In one exhibit they explained some of the local sayings.

 

Only 11 miles separates this part of Ireland from Scotland, and we visited a museum dedicated to the Scotch-Irish and their influence around the world.  Several US presidents, starting with Andrew Jackson have direct Scotch-Irish ancestry.  In the potato famine, Ireland lost 1 million people to starvation, and 1 million to a mass migration.  Their population has not yet returned to pre-famine numbers.

I spoke earlier about Ireland's influence on American music.  After our farewell dinner, we had more opportunity to experience some of that Irish music.  Kudos to George for catching on to the dancing so quickly.  This event was a real treat, as each song/dance was proceeded with a short description melding the music with Ireland's long history.  

Ireland-2019 (Around Portrush)

I'm getting behind in my blog postings.  We have been busy.  Tuesday we did a lot of walking and climbing, investigating the many things to do in the Portrush area.

Our first stop was the "Giant's Causeway", which is a World Heritage Site.  You can barely make it out in the background, but those are basalt columns extruding up from the shoreline below.  In addition to a lot of hill climbing, Vera counted 164 steps on our trek to get there.

The "Causeway" was formed during a volcanic eruption in which basalt was extruded into the sea and fractured into these large columns.

Some of us were adventuresome and climbed to the top.  The guy in the orange vest is there to help out just in case anyone got stuck on the very slick surfaces.  That's Dave in the middle debating about whether he needs help or not.

Next stop was Dunluce Castle, where parts of "Game of Thrones" was filmed.  It is easy to see why they picked the site.  Much of Northern Ireland was used for the filming of the series, and the main recording studio was in Belfast.  It was a great boon to the local economy.

The castle sits on a high cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.  Years ago, part of it fell into the sea during a violent winter storm.

The views are quite stunning.

Next stop was the Bushmills distillery.  Vera and I went for the "Hot Toddy", as we are both recovering from a cold that had been spreading through the bus.

The Carrick-a-Rede Rope bridge was our last stop.  For years it has been used as a way for fishermen to access a prime fishing spot. It is still used that way today during the Spring salmon season, and of course for tourists like us.

Lots of stairs down (and back up).  

Almost all of us ventured across.  Now the long trek back up many steps to the bus.  Needless to say, everyone was quite tired at the end of this day.

Ireland-2019 (Westport to Portrush)

Today was a long day, traveling from Westport, in Ireland, to Portrush, in Northern Ireland.  Ireland is a separate country, and part of the European Union.  Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, which is slated to leave the EU the end of next month.  Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU.  If the UK leaves the EU, the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland will no longer be open.  There is a lot of traffic and commerce that goes on across that border.

Our first stop was Drumcliffe Church, burial place of William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet.  I'm not a Yeats fan, but the views are spectacular.

Next we stopped in Londonderry (or Derry depending on your political leanings).  This is the First Presbyterian Church, which some say looks like a court house.   Derry's court house looks like a church.  Our guide described the 4 major religions in Derry as Protestant, Catholic, Methodist and Presbyterian.  Even our guide was confused by that description.  I think Protestant means Church of England.

Derry was the site of many of the bombings during the 70's and 80's.  That has stopped, and there are now murals depicting what happened.

This is a mural about a young girl who was killed while working on a school project.  The people in both countries do not like to refer to this as a conflict between Protestant and Catholics, but rather a conflict between those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK and those who want the island of Ireland to be one country.  Brexit throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing, and there does not appear to be a lot of support for Boris Johnson in either Ireland or Northern Ireland.

Ireland-2019 (Galway to Westport)

Today we drove from Galway to Westport.

The first stop was Ashford Castle in Cong.

We spent most of the time at the Ireland School of Falconry.  It was originally part of the castle, but now focuses on training falcons and other birds of prey.  The picture above is of an owl by the way.

Everyone who wanted to got a chance to feed this Haris Hawk, which is native to the southwest USA.  At the desert museum in Tucson you can see the same bird, although you don't get to feed them.  They are also the only bird of prey that hunts in a group.

The bird flew into the tree, and then flew back to get fed by each volunteer.  You do not want to mess with the beak or the talons.  Click the play button to watch this short video of Vera and our Hawk.

We continued on to Westport, passing through beautiful and desolate valleys formed by glaciers long ago.  We had lunch at the head of one of Ireland's only fiords.  The landscape is much like that of parts of Norway.

We stopped at a memorial dedicated to 100s of peasant Irishmen who perished in the bitter cold after they petitioned England for help during the potato famine.  Unfortunately, they got no help.  David Cameron, while Prime Minister, apologized for England's lack of help to the Irish at that time.