Iss ma lum cocka millish

Hello from Ireland! I have just kissed the Blarney Stone at Blarney castle and am feeling particularly keen to
write about my adventures.

I am on a six day Paddywagon Tour and it is FANTASTIC! The people are great and the driver/tour guide is very informative. I started off by hopping on a ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare. Aunty Linda drove me up and we stopped off on the way at the ancestral home town of the Rees family and saw some graves dating back to 1800s from that side of our family. The grounds are beautiful and eerie with very old trees crounching down over the graves, creating shady glens.
I jumped on the boat, the crossing taking 3 1/2 hours and then I faced a 3 hour bus ride up to Dublin. I was a bit nervous because I got in at 11pm. However, the hostel was close by and I got there with only one minor panic when I suddenly realised I had left my purse on the bus so I was chasing the bus with backpack on. Luckily he hadn't quite pulled away. Whew!
The hostel was average and there was no hot water in the showers in the morning! It wasn't the way I wanted to start the day. We jumped on the bus at 8am and our first stop was Belfast via Drogheda where we saw the decapitated head of St Oliver Plunkett at St Peter's church. It is basically a mumified head. It's a bit macabre but it was cool to see. Apparently the rest was left hanging in the 16th century. Lots of people travel to see it and a piece (apparently) of the cross that Jesus was nailed to.

Next we went on to Monasterboice which is an old graveyard with watch tower. There are high crosses all

over the place and the monastary and a few of the crosses date back over a thousand years. It has managed to survive quite a few survived viking raids and fires so it really does deserve the recognition it has gained.

From there we made our way into Belfast. Beflast is an intriguing city and at the same time there is this feeling as if everyone is holding their breaths, waiting for things to go wrong. It has only been in the last ten years that peace has started to be discussed and there is still the odd bomb threat and fight breaking out. Mark, the tour guide was great at giving us loads of information and telling the stories of Bloody Sunday and the Hunger Strikes but what was better was taking a black taxi into the Protestant part of the city and then into the Catholic corner. We had to use black taxis because the bus a few years ago was burnt out and still has stones thrown at it because they are a big, green Irish bus.
The taxi drivers took us into these housing areas and let us get out and take photos of the wall murals.

Apparently the government wants to paint over them but the locals kick off and riot. So the new date for trying to remove the paintings is 2025. Isn't that insane. They are quite political and a lot of them are very dark in nature.
It is hard to understand fully why they continue to fight. They are so similar in their religions and yet they are so stuck in their ways that change is slow, very slow, in coming. I got the feeling in the Protestant corner that we were tolerated but it felt as if everyone was looking at us from their windows. It was not a nice feeling. It is very poor and there is a lot of broken bottles and the such. What was even more surprising was the wall that seperates the two sides.
To call it a 'Peace Wall' is a bit sad. It is peace-keeping but only because they are removed from one another and the gates are shut and locked tight each night so the two cannot meet. That is very sad, especially in the 21st century. We stopped at the peace wall and the drivers gave us vivids to write our messages and then we headed back into the city centre where it was a bit less tense.
There was a market to grab a bit to eat and then we headed to the Titanic museum. We had two hours there, and despite the 40 minute wait to get in, it was still worthwhile. The museum is very impressive with all of the information they have and the interactive attractions, including a cart ride where they show you the building of the Titanic in process and a 3D room where you do a virtual walk-through of the ship as it would have been pre-sinking.
That night we went out to Ryan's Bar and had a group meal and drinks before heading into town for a night of traditional live music and singing. We were told earlier in the day a line 'Iss ma lum cocka millish' and we were told to say this if we met a nice boy we wanted to get to know but Mark wouldn't tell us what it meant.

Day two we were up nice and early and heading down to Galway via quite a few sights. First one was

Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. It was where the fishermen used to fish from but the only way to get there was by crossing their rope bridge with a single hand rail and a 60 foot drop into the ocean. Quite exciting! Since then (200 years or so) they have done it up but it is still a rope bridge. This being the year of no-regrets, I walked across that bridge as it swung and bounced. The views were inspiring and I got some great photos. This is me on the bridge with a slightly edgy look (sorry, punny moment!)

Anyway, from there we headed off to the Giant's Causeway which is one of the 8 natural wonders of the world (or so our tour guide told us). I walked down the bassalt columns, climbed up a few and then sat and watched the sea crash in against them. I even took some time to sketch out a bit of it. Mind you, it was really hard to draw because of all of the repeated patterning.

There is a great story about the area though about an Irish giant called Finn McCoul (?) who was having a fight with a Scottish giant across the sea. After a lot of rock throwing and insults the Scottish giant said 'if you want to fight me, build a bridge and I will fight ya'. So Finn builds this bridge but doesn't tell the Scottish giant and when he finishes the bridge and sneaks up on the Scot he is terrified at how big he is so he runs back to Ireland and tells his wife what he has done. The wife dresses up Finn as a baby and puts him in the cot. The Scottish giant, seeing the finished bridge comes over and starts banging on the door, demanding entrance. Finn's wife answers and tells him that Finn isn't home, but would he like to come in. The giant is not too happy but takes her up on the hospitality. As he is waiting for Finn to turn up, the 'baby' wakes up and stands. The Scottish giant is absolutely terrified when he sees the size of the baby and wonders just how big the father must be, so he runs back to the bridge where he destroys it as he goes. The giant's causeway is all that is left of that bridge.

From there we stopped at W.B. Yeats' grave and I, English teacher that I am, took a few photos and then bowed to the tourist gods and bought an over-priced book of his poetry. Sigh. I am such an easy target.

Bloody Sunday and Internment

That night we stayed in Derry where we did a walking tour of where Bloody Sunday took place. Bloody Sunday was where the Irish were having a peaceful protest and the English soldiers came along (who were there at the time trying to stop the rioting and quell the fighters). 14 people were shot that day in the 1970s and most of them were shot from behind as they were running away. 5 of them were only 17 years old. It has been a huge bone of contention for some time because the English govt for a long time claimed that they had shot and killed terrorists and arsonists etc. It was only two or three years ago that David Cameron (recent prime minister of the UK) apologised the people of Derry and owned up to the fact that the British had done bad.
That night in Derry we once again headed out for dinner and live music. It was not quite as lively as Belfast but it was still a nice night. The next day we were heading off to Galway.

Galway! YAAAAYYY! I have wanted to go to Galway for a while now and I got a few firsts in while there. First Guiness in Ireland - which by the by, tastes a lot better here than back home.
First kiss by an Irishman - We'd been talking for a while and then he asked if I had a boyfriend. Nope, no boyfriend. Brain secretly cheering at this. Then he asked if I had ever been kissed by an Irishman and even as I shook my head, he was in! Woohoo! Not too bad at all. Only found out his name about half way through! Damien, by the way.

Cliffs of Moher

Before I got to Galway, we made a few stops. One was Dunguaire castle where it is said that if you walk counter-clockwise around the castle walls you get to be a virgin again, then onto Corcomroe Abbey where the designers of the abbey were killed as soon as it was done so that they would never be able to re-create it for someone else. And from there we went to the Cliffs of Insanity aka the hidden place of the horcrux aka the Cliffs of Moher.
Yip! It is where they shot part of the princess bride and the cliffs of insanity. It is also where Dumbledore and
Harry Potter land on their way into the cave where the locket was hidden. COOOOOL! We walked along some of the cliffs and I got some great shots of me standing alongside the cliff. I didn't get any closer to the edge than that. It was very windy, very sunny, very beautiful.
It was from there that we went to Blarney castle! Yay! I am now licensed to tell blarney's for the next 7 years. Perfect. I got to kiss the stone but I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to spend more time there. I am going back!