Northern Ireland--Belfast

On our second full day in Northern Ireland, we hitched a ride to Belfast with Heather, who had a meeting there. We grabbed a quick lunch (a traditional fry for me!) at an Irish version of a greasy spoon, Hungry Bhoy.

We then headed downtown to find a map and to ride the ferris wheel, which is turning out to be a very expensive new hobby of Sophie's. She likes the rides, though, so how can we say "no?"


Under the ferris wheel was a memorial statue to those lost on the Titanic (which was built in Belfast):


Here is Sophie in front of the ferris wheel entrance:


And right after we got on:



eViews from the top:


These cranes are called "Samson" and "Goliath," apparently the biggest cranes in the world. Belfast also has the biggest dry dock in the world, if I recall correctly.

A strange bus sign that we saw while wandering around downtown...it reminded us that although we speak the same language as the Irish, we don't always understand what they're saying!


And, as usual, Sophie fell asleep in her stroller. This is how she decided she was going to sleep:


St. Anne's Cathedral, a protestant church in Belfast:


The lines in this maze actually have some symbolism: the black represents sin and leads to nowhere and the white represents the righteous path and leads to the altar.


A nice mosaic:

The nave:


A nice building in the downtown area:

Finally, after all of that walking (and a couple of trips into some bookstores!), we decided we needed some nourishment. We stepped into a coffee shop, and Sophie had her first gingerbread man. She took the first couple of bites happily, but then realized that he was starting to miss body parts...this seemed to bother her a little and slowed down her munching quite a bit!

Northern Ireland--Closkelt and Newcastle

After our day in Dublin, we headed up to Closkelt, Northern Ireland, a tiny, tiny village near Belfast. My friend from college, Heather, lives there, so we spent time visiting her and exploring the area.

Our first morning there, Sophie and I took a walk down the road, and here's what we saw:



The Irish countryside is full of cows, and Sophie loved them all:


A little baby cow would come up to Sophie if I stepped back...


And soon, she had half of the herd around her!


Heather was able to find a little Thomas the Tank Engine toy for Sophie, which she dragged around for the whole trip!


That afternoon, we decided to drive out to Newcastle, a beach town near Closkelt. I was elected to drive, although I had never driven on the left side of the road (or right side of the car before)! It was an adventure, but I have to say that I became quite the expert by the end of the trip!


So we drove out to Newcastle, and the first thing we saw was a beautiful rainbow:


There were all sorts of little "statues" along the boardwalk, and Sophie discovered all of them:



We also realized that although we've visited California several times (and even been in beach towns there), we've never taken Sophie to the beach! This was her first ocean beach experience, and she loved wandering around collecting shells...we have a little collection that she brought back with her!



Here she is proudly displaying her shells. We found many more hidden away in her jacket pocket when we got back to Closkelt!


It was quite chilly and a little rainy in Newcastle, so we stopped at a cafe that Heather suggested called Maud's. It was a very nice cafe full of windows overlooking the beach...perfect for rainy weather! Sophie had been begging for a doughnut for days (don't ask me why...we don't eat very many doughnuts!), and lo and behold, Maud's had some beautiful cake doughnuts with pink frosting and colorful sprinkles...a perfect snack for a little girl.

We headed back on the scenic route, which was beautiful, but we didn't get any pictures because I still wasn't used to driving, so I didn't want to stop! One of the last roads we were on was a two-lane country road. True to Ireland, traffic was stopped to let the farmers move the cows from one pasture to another!

We got back from our trip to Ireland a couple of days ago, but it's been too busy to post any pictures. It was a great trip, and a true vacation for us...Ian only checked his email once! (It was difficult to do email there, so that was a plus for a vacation!)

We flew into Dublin on Ryanair...quite an experience. They don't assign seats or even groups to help with loading, so it's really a free-for-all. On the way there, we got two seats together, but not three. We learned our lesson and pushed our way through on the way back to get three seats together! It definitely is a no-frills airline, but for the price we paid for three tickets, we can't complain.

We arrived in Dublin at about 1am, and immediately crashed in our hotel room. The next morning, we were up to go see the sights, but true to Irish weather, it was rainy and quite miserable. We got a lot of indoor pictures, but very few outdoors ones because of this. We started at the Trinity College library, where they have a museum about the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript from the 9th century. No pictures were allowed, but you can follow the link to see some of what we saw. They are quite amazing...

After that, we headed off to lunch at a pub, where I was so happy to have a pint of cider on tap! Ian tried true Guinness and confirmed that it does indeed taste different in Ireland than when it is imported. :-)

We headed off to the Christ Church Cathedral after that (mostly because it was rainy and cold outside, and we wanted to be indoors quickly!). It was a nice surprise, and we ended up staying there for quite a while. (And in the meantime, my favorite umbrella was stolen!) This is where most of our pictures were taken in Dublin.

The floors were absolutely amazing...I won't bore you with the millions of pictures I took of them, but they were unusually tiled. These are pictures of the aisle leading to the altar:



I also noticed that the church had some other amazing details when I bothered to look up from the floor:

This is the iron case for Laurence O'Toole's actual heart. Laurence O'Toole was the archbishop of Dublin beginning in 1161 and then was made a saint. He died in Normandy, and they brought the heart back just for this purpose. A little gruesome, I know, but interesting nonetheless.

I took the opportunity to light a candle for peace:

Some more views of the church:




Strongbow's remains were there as well, although it turns out that this isn't really his lid...his lid was destroyed somehow, and they stole this one from another sarcophagus!

There was a crypt (that didn't really have any remains in it except for a mummified cat and rat found in the organ pipes years ago...weird!), and so we descended. The most interesting part of the crypt for Sophie were the stocks:

When we got outside, it had stopped long enough for us to take some pictures of the outside and to walk back to the city centre.



O'Connell Street, one of the main streets of Dublin had a pedestrian area between the two sides of the street full of statues and memorials. This one is to Jim Larkin, a prominent trade-union leader in the early 1900s.

And one for Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the people responsible for Home Rule in Ireland:


The Garden of Remembrance (which was closed that day), dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the pursuit of Irish freedom.


O'Connell Street had several of these very interesting motion "statues." Here's a video of one. (I can't get it to rotate to be right-side up, but I'll try to get Ian to fix it and repost it later.)

I'll try to start posting pictures of our trip to Northern Ireland tomorrow!