We’ve had a great day today. We were up and out (relatively) early, made a quick-seeming traffic-free drive to Derry, where we walked around the city walls, ate lunch, got cheap and delicious hot chocolates, tea, and latte at, of all places, a McDonalds in a modern mall right outside the old city walls (it was the only place open at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday morning). From there, we had […]
In my haste to make sure I post every day, I realize that there are many interesting or notable things we did that haven’t yet made it into the blog. So, in no particular order, here are a few nuggets that I’ve missed so far (this will also make up for the fact that the next two days will be post-free): The Boys Buy Dinner in Ballycastle: For some reason, […]
I think we must all be feeing low on energy from our travels. Today no one really wanted to leave the house, so we all just lounged around doing various things, and didn’t get out until after 1. Suzie took the boys to the Zoo, which they say was very good, and I drove to a small commercial area and walked around. And of course it rained again off and […]
I realized today that those of you viewing the blog on a screen with a horizontal resolution of less than 1280 pixels (including those using the very common size of 1024 x 768) will have the right side of my posted photos cut off by the browser. Rather than asking you all to change your screen resolutions, I’ll be posting smaller pictures, which will allow you all to see all […]
Andrew came running into the house, excitedly saying, “Porcupine, porcupine, you gotta come see, there’s a porcupine out here!” So we trotted outside and over into the neighbor’s yard, where we saw, not a porcupine (porcupines are apparently a new world animal, and are much larger) but a hedgehog. This also gave us an occasion to meet our neighbors to the east, a retired couple named Ian and (I think, […]
It’s rained off and on since we arrived in Ireland, but it’s never stopped us from doing anything until today. We had planned on driving back up the Antrim coast (we considered a trip to Derry/Londonderry, but decided the drive was too long. We started out a little before noon in a light drizzle/mist, which changed into a medium- and then a heavy drizzle/mist. We were searching for the cliffs […]
For those of your who recall the horrible incident involving Luxembourgeoise cows several years ago (detailed here), I am pleased to report that Irish cows, at least those in County Antrim, appear to be peaceable and docile, if somewhat stubborn. There is a very large monument sitting on a high bluff overlooking the neighborhood in which we are staying. From our house, it looks like this: Thursday was a bright, […]
We had a fairly restful day touring yesterday. The weather was mostly sunny, but it was extremely windy. We went southeast of Belfast, down and around the Ards Peninsula. Bound on the east by the North Channel and on the west by Strangford Lough, it is a fertile, relatively flat land. Suzie read somewhere that at some time in the past the residents were offered extra incentives to build towers […]
We decided today to stay close to home, as I was tired of driving after our trek yesterday. Our destination was the Belfast Castle and Cave Hill Park, which is next to it. The weather forecast for Thursday on looks very bad, so we decided to take advantage of being able to be outside. The Belfast Castle is not really a castle at all, but rather a large, elaborate 19th-century […]
We just returned from a 9-hour trip to the Antrim coast and back. It was amazingly, stunningly, incredible beautiful and dramatic, just what we imagined Ireland would be like. Best of all, almost no rain, and lots of sun. Just lots of green, hundreds of shades of green, all of it lush and deep, dotted with thousands upon thousands of sheep and cows. Lots of narrow winding roads, and ancient […]