Galway Girl

On Saturday the 12th, we started our long drive to Galway.  It is nearly a four hour drive straight through, but as per usual, we made some stops.

Our first stop was a quick one in Kells. Kells has a small abbey where the Book of Kells (a manuscript and Celtic Gospel book written in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament) was written and kept safe for hundreds of years. After a quick walk around and photo stop, we continued on our way.

Our next stop was at Causey Farms, which is a working farm that does tours and also educational work for school groups. We first got the chance to make some Irish soda bread. We mixed everything together and left it to be baked while we went on a tour of the farm. There was every animal you'd expect on a farm and we even got to watch some sheep herding.

By the time we were done with the tour, it was time for lunch. The farm has a small cafe and we got to eat roasted vegetable soup with our bread. Megan and my bread was a little dense. We didn't mix in quite enough moisture. But dessert, scones with jam and cream and tea, more then made up for it!

We loaded back onto the bus after lunch and finally finished our drive to Galway. There was an extra excursion that most of the group went on that evening, so Megan and I teamed up with two others in the group to catch a cab into the middle of town for dinner. We were dropped off at Eyre Square and the walked down the main road into the Latin Quarter. With all of the tourists, it took us a while to find a restaurant with seating available right away.  Eventually we did though, and I had a dinner of fish and chips with a charcuterie board for the table to split. We took a taxi back then and called it a night.

The next day (Aug 13) was our full day in Galway. We started out with a walking tour through the central part of town, learning more about the area we had been the previous night. Along our walk we saw the Lynch Castle, the site of the first lynching, the Spanish arches, and both the old and new ports.

(Our tour director, David, sitting with Oscar Wilde and his brother.)

(Lynch Castle)

(Spanish arches)

(Fáilte [fal-cha] means Welcome in Irish Gaelic)

We had some free time in the city then. Megan, Kris, and I broke off from the main group to leisurely do some shopping. We visited a lot of stores including souvenir, antiques, art, wool, and jewelry.  We also walked through two local artists markets. Galway is a wonderful city with twisting winding streets to explore.  We found that as soon as you got off the main road, the locals were friendly and the shops were less crowded. We met up with some others for lunch and then spent some time just sitting in Eyre Square while enjoying a coffee. We all loaded back onto the bus and went back to the hotel for a bit.

(Graffiti in Eyre Square. Not everyone is a fan of the royals here.)

Once again, there was another extra excursion that evening that Megan and I didn't sign up for, so we had our own fun. We found a nearby cinema and walked down to see the Barbie movie. It was so much fun! The theater even had thick red velvet curtains that pulled back to reveal the screen once it was time for the movie to start. I really enjoyed the movie too.

After the movie, we walked back discussing the movie and called it a night.

(Sunset through the gate at our hotel)

And that's it for this update! Next blog will include the Cliffs of Mother and the Dingle Peninsula!

Glasgow to Belfast

We had a slow start to the day on the 9th. Actually got to sleep-in a bit before we left the hotel. Our tour director managed to get us tickets for a cruise on Loch Lomond in the morning as we had some free time and there was no rush to get to Glasgow. The cruise made a huge circle around the southern part of the loch, and I am happy to say that I have found my new summer home! A 27 bedroom castle overlooking the loch with pastoral green fields and tall Scots Pines. Everyone is welcome!

After the cruise, we continued on to Glasgow. Now, I'm going to put in here that it has been a mission of several members of our group to find some highland cows. Thus far, we have been unsuccessful despite driving all over the highlands. HOWEVER!! There is Pollack Park in Glasgow where a herd of highland cows are free to roam (in huge enclosed areas). Of course this is a tourist destination, but it's also just a nice place to take a walk. So our gracious bus driver drove through for us. And not a single highland cow was in sight of the driving path!!  We were devastated!

So with crushed spirits, we then made our way to Kelvingrove Museum in the middle of Glasgow. We were given some time for lunch before the tour and our small group went to Mother India where we had Indian tapas! We tried four different kinds of Indian dishes, some samosas, and naan.

Once we'd finished, there was enough time to walk through the ground floor of the museum where the natural history section was. Our tour was on the second floor where the art was. It included a sampling of art from a variety of artists and heavily featured Scottish artists and history.

Our tour then continued on the bus and we drove around Glasgow to learn of the city's history and importance in relation to Scottish trade, in particular tobacco imported from the USA. The city is much more industrial than other places we've been so far, even compared to London! And it was a little difficult to navigate because the first ever world cycling championships are happening now resulting in many blocked off roads. So we just got off the bus to walk a bit and eventually made our way to St. Mungo's Cathedral (aka Glasgow Cathedral) first built in the twelfth century!

Our city tour ended there and we drove to our hotel. Many of us needed to refresh by this time as it was close to 5pm and we'd been traveling on and off the bus all day. Our hotel was in the city center near George Square. It was a very modernist hotel with small rooms, but the shower was my favorite one so far!

After a little refresher, some of our group met up with our tour director, David, to go for a walk around the city center.  We found the famous Duke of Wellington who always has a traffic cone on his head! Police used to take it off, but the cone would be quickly replaced by someone brave enough to climb up the statue.  Currently, the duke also has a spiderman mask on as well as the cone. Other members of our group caught an Uber back to Pollack Park for another chance at spotting Highland cows. We went on the walk, but I did hear a report back that the group who went cow hunting were successful! (I'll include a picture sent to me below.)

For dinner, David recommended a restaurant called The Ivy. We found it easily and got a table. We should have known it was a pretty fancy place when the guy showing us to our table was wearing a full suit and bowtie. We were seated in a back corner (probably because we were wearing jeans and sweatshirts). We ordered wine and selected our food. My meal was a split pea soup with lentil and thistle salad for a starter and wild mushroom linguini in cream sauce.  Another indicator of the fanciness was that the waiter poured my soup into the bowl for me at the table. We also had full place settings with different silverware for different courses. The food was delicious! But a little too spendy for every day dining.

We ended the night with a little adventure. First we restocked our snack supply at a nearby Tesco Express and then proceeded to walk 20 minutes in the wrong direction. We thought we were going to the right place, because we'd looked it up on Google Maps, but it turns out there's two Ibis Hotels in "central" Glasgow. We made it all the way to the wrong one before figuring it out. By this point, it was fully night, the night time party people were out, and my legs hurt from all the walking. So we ordered an Uber and got a safe ride home! Thus ended the mini adventure!

The next morning (Aug. 10th) was another early day because we needed to catch the ferry to Northern Ireland!  The ferry leaves from a small port called Cairnryan, which was a little over an hour drive south of Glasgow. The drive was filled with more beautiful Scottish landscapes, but eventually we had to say goodbye to Scotland.

The ferry ride was two and a half hours over the Sea of Ireland. Luckily it was smooth sailing and we had some downtime to just sit and relax. However, if we had wanted to, there was a small casino, a movie theater, a bar, and a restaurant just to name a few amenities available.

Once we docked in Belfast, we gathered our luggage and sound our new bus driver, an Irish man named Declan. He brought us to our hotel in central Belfast.  Our hotel didn't quite have our rooms ready yet, so David took us on a walking tour around central Belfast. We were within blocks of city hall, Victoria Square shopping center, and the notorious Europa hotel which has the unfortunate reputation of being the most bombed hotel in Europe (thanks to the Troubles).

Afterwards, we were able to get into our rooms and we took a moment to rest before headed down for a group dinner in the hotel restaurant.  After dinner, a small group of us went down the street to Brennans' Bar for a drink and to listen to the live music.

Our final day in Belfast (Aug. 11) was a busy one.  We started out with a city tour first thing in the morning from a local guide who doubles as a high school teacher in the off season.  She was very knowledgable about Belfast and wasn't afraid to dive into the political history.  We learned of the divide between Catholics (Nationalists) and Protestants (Unioninsts) and of the Good Friday agreement that stopped the violence between the two groups.  We also visited a section of the peace wall and were encouraged to write a message of peace on it.  It might be cheesy, but I wrote lyrics from John Lennon's song, Imagine.

You may think I'm a dreamer,

But I'm not the only one.

Someday I hope you'll join us,

And the world will live as one.

After the tour, we were dropped off at the Titanic Exhibit.  The building is massive.  It is a five pointed star that, when looked at from above, looks like the White Star logo, and each point when looked at from below looks like the bow of the ship.

Inside, the exhibit is an immersive experience that starts you off with learning about Belfast in the early 1900s and how ship building was important to the city almost as much as linen weaving.  Then the exhibt takes you into a "ship yard" and you have the option to ride on a cart through that part of the exhibit.  Megan and I did and it was really cool!

Then it starts to focus on Titanic.  You get to learn of the ship, how impressive it was for its day, and what the people were like who boarded it.

Eventually, you come to the sinking and the exhibit literally gets darker.  Everything is lit with cool blue lights and there are sounds of the first class quartet playing over the speakers.  There is also a corner that shows pictures and stories of the "heroes of Titanic", people who tried to save others and did their best to put human life first.

Finally, you come to a massive wall displaying all of the names of those who perished.  It is immensely impactful seeing all of those names, especially when you see long lists of people with the same last name (entire families all dying together).

The exhibit ended with a circular room, a spiral staircase slowly bringing you down to a floor that looked like a glass bottom boat.  Projectors lit the walls with infographics, pictures, and artists renditions of the ship and people.  Music swells through the room, bringing joy and optimism that slowly fades to tragic despair. There were some artifacts - a fur coat, a deck chair, a pocket watch - retrieved from the wreck and put on display.  Click here to see a 1 minute video of the final room.

Walking outside afterwards was disorienting after being so immersed in the exhibit.  The sun and fresh air almost felt inappropriate.  However, we took a moment to have lunch outside and reacclimate to the sun and salty air of Belfast.

The afternoon was another adventure of a different kind.  We drove north to the Giant's Causeway.  Fun fact, it is the windiest place in Ireland!  It is also possible to see Scotland to the north east on a clear day as it is only about ten miles away at that point.

We walked through the visitor's center and down the path to the causeway, taking in the dramatic cliffs and steep green hills.  There were many tourists here, so it was difficult to get pictures without a dozen or more people in the frame.  Luckily, Google photos let's me magically erase people, so you get to enjoy a few people-less pictures!

The hexagonal stones create natural steps for people to climb all over and that is exactly what most people were doing.  I did not feel comfortable climbing all over because of the steep drops in some areas and the slippery rocks in others, so I found a perch near the top of one of the hills and settled in to enjoy the people watching and amazing views.

Unfortunately though, one of our group members had an accident here.  She slipped on one of the rocks and wound up twising an ankle, bruising a knee, spraining a wrist, and cutting open the back of her head.  Luckily, she did not get a concussion and was able to walk back to the bus with some help from a medic.  Unluckily, it took two hospitals and hours of waiting for her to be seen by a doctor.  We're all very grateful that she will be okay.

The hour long drive back to the hotel was full of people catching small cat naps, myself included, which just meant that I was ready to go out once we got back to Belfast.  Megan, Kris, and I made our customary run to Tesco to stock up on travel snacks and then we got pizza to go from Little Italy, a fast pizza place right across from our hotel claiming to have the best pizza in Belfast.  It was pretty good!  Our final event for the night was a return to Brennans' Bar for a drink and to listen to more live music.  Because it was a Friday, the bar was far more crowded, but there was still room for people dancing!  The musical group was playing some classic American songs from artists like Tina Turner, Prince, and Elvis.  We only stayed for about an hour though before heading back to the hotel to pack for our next stop.

And that concludes our stay in Belfast.  Stay tuned for next time when we enter the Republic of Ireland and go to Galway!

On to the Highlands!

My journey continues on into the Highlands!  We set out early on the 7th to get up into the Scottish Highlands. Our drive included scenic mountains and tranquil lochs.  In particular, we saw the giant kelpie statue dedicated to all the work horses who helped industrialize Scotland.  We also passed through Trossachs National Park.

Traveling through the ravines at the base of the mountains was remarkable.  Especially once we found out that the mountains were part of the Appalachain Mountain range at one point in time before the North American and Eurasian plate split them apart.  Today the moutains are covered in lush green grass and Sitka Spruce, but prior to the world wars and the industrial revolution, they were covered in Scots Pine.  Now there are small groves of Scots Pine that are protected, but for the most part it's rather bare and there's very little biodiversity.

Around the middle of the day, we stopped at Inverary Castle, the current and ancestral home of the Campbell Clan leader aka the Duke of Argyll.  Part of the castle (really a very large house) is open to tours and visitors while the other part is sectioned off for the private residence of the 13th Duke of Argyll and his family.  The house (or at least the part open to tours) is decorated in light yellows and blacks (the Campbell Clan colors) and impressive displays of weapons, historical artifacts, paintings, and photos.  The living area has a piano that was used to create some of the songs and music for My Fair Lady.

After a tour of the house, we took a short walk out into the garden.  The immaculately planned and cultivated garden held many plants native to Scotland, but it also held a small bamboo grove to honor the Duke's work in panda conservation.  We even found a selfie staition at the back of the garden!

We lunched for the day in the small town of Inverary.  It was a blink and you miss it type of town, but you wouldn't want to blink else you'd miss the fantastic views of the highlands over Loch Fyne.  Because the loch is connected to the ocean, it boasts some amazing seafood and fish.  We found a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant called The Cottage and ordered some sandwiches, some of which included salmon, crab, and lobster.  I'm not a seafood person, but my sandwich was just as good: chicken, brie, and cranberry sauce toasted in a panini.

We loaded back into the bus and headed back on the road once everyone had their fill of both food and the scenery.  We then made our way to our hotel, the Rosslea located in Rhu, a small town outside of Helensburgh.  This hotel was much quieter than the two we had stayed in previously.  The only real noise was the soft lapping of the waves of Loch Fyne right out side and a clock that chimed every quarter hour nearby.  It was quite peaceful.  The room Megan and I were assigned had a view of the guardens and the loch.  Couldn't have asked for a better place to sit and sip a cup of tea.

Dinner was included this night and we feasted on a three course meal at the hotel.  My dinner for the night included duck pate on brioche toast with a small salad, chicken with creamy mashed potatos and broccoli in a brown sauce, and strawberry cheesecake with a berry compote for dessert.  It was amazing.

Our final excursion for the night was a short walk along the loch out to the light house where several locals were fishing from the shore.  The wind blowing in the saltwater smell and a small rain squall moving through the mountains in the distance.

The next day was when we really got into the highlands!  We woke early on the morning of the 8th in order to get a good start.  We had a scheduled distillery tour, but first, we travled back along the lochs and through Trossach's National Park.  This time, the scenery was truly awe-inspiring.  Pictures could never do it justice, but I tried my best to capture the true majesty of the cloud covered peakes, the sun dappled slopes, and rocky outcrops.

We made a few stops in the morning including a scenic photo opportunity with the Three Sister's Mountain and a memorial to commandos who have passed (both in action and outside of it).

Our distillery tour took place a Ben Nevis distillery just north of Fort William and in the shadow of Ben Nevis, a looming moutain peak who's tip was shrouded in shadow.  Ben Nevis is also where the distillery gets all of its water.  We took a tour of the facilities and learned about the brewing process.  Did you know that in order for it to be called Scotch whisky, it must meet several qualifications?

• Made in Scotland from only cereals, water and yeast.
• Matured for a minimum of 3 years in oak casks.
• Bottled at a minimum strength of 40% abv.
• Distilled below 94.8% abv so that it retains the flavour and aroma derived from its raw materials.
• No flavouring or sweetening is permitted.

As is usual in these kinds of things, we ended our tour with a tasting.  The whisky we sampled was the minimum alcohol percentage, 40%, and had a sweeter inital taste with a lingering sublte burn.

After the distillery tour we made our way to Fort William for lunch.  However, there was a small incident along the way.  While traveling the narrow winding roads the follow the loch, a motorhome going the opposite direction crossed the center line slightly and destroyed our coach's side mirror then left black marks along the side of the coach.  I don't know if you've ever seen an angry Scotsman, but I certainly have now!  Our driver, Ian, pulled over to the side of the road and quickly assessed the damage.  No one was injured except for the coach and the motorhome never stopped.  So while we enjoyed lunch and shopping at Fort William, Ian spent that time making a police report.  Found out later that Ian's report was the third that day of the exact same thing happening.

Anyway, after lunch, we slowly stared to make our way home with stops for photos, stretching, and bathroom.  One of our stops was at Neptune's Steps, which is a series of locks and dams that help smaller boats get up or down the river.  That particular river is connected to a set of lochs that cut across Scotland.  It is possible to get from the North Sea to the Atlantic this way.  Another stop the Glencoe visitor center.  This place had beautiful scenery of the highlands, but it also had an earth home recreated using tools and materials that would've been available during the time of the vikings and before.  Glencoe is also the site where the Campbell Clan slaughtered the MacDonald clan back in the mid-1600s and our tour guide helpfully played a song to remind us of this (he's a MacDonald on his mother's side).

Massacre of Glencoe Song

However that was not the end of our day.  While on our way back to the hotel, we turned off on a smaller road that traveled along a loch.  It was a narrow road with a wall and houses on one side and the loch on the other.  Unfortunately, we got about a mile and half down it when we were stopped and told that traffic was blocked ahead.  Which meant that we had to literally back up nearly that whole mile and a half.  Ian, our driver, handled it like a pro though and after backing up for a mile, found a spot to actually turn around and got us out of there.

And as some of you may know, these kinds of things come in threes, so this was still not the end.  When we were only about 15 minutes out from the hotel, traffic was backed up, so Ian turned down a side road that would take us through the countryside and into town the back way.  While going around a corner, a tractor carrying bales of hay nearly head on collided with us.  The whole front of the bus gasped.  But both Ian and the tractor stopped in time and we avoided a collision.

THANKFULLY, that was it.  We made it back to the hotel and some people got together to buy Ian a drink!  The man deserved it after all of that!

And that is it for our tour through the highlands!

Stay tuned for next time when we head down to our final city in Scotland, Glasgow!