Sunday morning, we checked out of Ashford Castle. We were both sorry to tell it goodbye. Someday, when I'm wonderfully wealthy, I'm going to spend a week there doing everything they have to offer.
After that, I insisted we attend Mass. I read all sorts of things about Ireland and set in Ireland before we came, and a recurring theme was definitely the influence of the Catholic Church. So we had to go to mass. It was a modern building (though it was on the same grounds as the ruins of a very old church), and it was packed for Easter Sunday. The priest's sermon focused on baptism--how it was a miracle that Christ rose again, and how we partake in that, and how that is because of the promises made vicariously for you at baptism (I think that's how he went). Then he walked up and down the aisles sprinkling the congregation with holy water to remind us of our baptisms.
We next jumped in our faithful little car again and headed to Lough Key Forest Park. We were all excited about doing this (as in, we had talked about it since before we left):
When we actually got there, though, we were told we'd need at least three people. I went up to a group of three girls and asked if we could join them. They said yes, but then went in without us. We didn't do it. It was all very tragic.
We spent the night in Donegal and saw the castle there first thing this morning (well, after a giant Irish breakfast at the bed and breakfast). It turned out to be one of my favorites so far.
I wouldn't mind a room like that in my house someday.
Then we drove to Northern Ireland. Ireland is, of course, its own country, while Northern Ireland is part of the UK. I made sure to have my passport accessible this morning as we were packing up, not sure what the boarder crossing would entail. We had quite a bit of driving today. At some point, some of the road markings started looking a little bit different, and then the GPS (in metric) started displaying odd, uneven numbers for the speed limit. And then I thought, "I think we're in the UK." And I was right.
No offense to the Irish, the British road markings are just a bit clearer. And no offense to the British, but things are expensive here.
Before stopping at a rope bridge that goes to an island and then arriving in Belfast for the night, we went to the Giant's Causeway. The story is, there were two rival giants, one in Ireland, one in Scotland. The Ireland giant, Finn MacCool, was full of bravado, and built this causeway across to Scotland daring the giant there to come fight him. The thing was, the Scottish giant was a lot bigger and meaner, and as soon as Finn saw this, he ran home and had his wife disguise him as a baby. The Scottish giant (who I guess is nameless) stormed over, saw the size of the baby, imagined the size of the father, and ran away back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway as he went.
The place has some really unique geology, formed by volcano lava cooling.
1 comment:
Interesting!!!!!
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