Greetings, All!

We have just returned from the Old Country! It was a great trip. We went north this time, going counterclockwise through Northern Ireland, Counties Donegal and Sligo, then back to Dublin through Co. Leitrim.  Most of what we saw was new for us. We traveled again with our great friends and travel buddies, Boo & Rollie Conner. The weather was a bit sketchy. Everyone kept telling us how late the Spring was this year. We had good days mixed with chilly rainy ones.. And being on the north side of the island didn’t help. Oh well, you can’t go to Ireland and then complain that it rained.

We departed the US on Aptil 29^th, arriving in Dublin on the 30^th. The flights seem to run earlier than they used to. Plus getting through customs & Immigration is much more streamlined. In any case I had my first image on my memory card by 5:56 AM. We decided before we left the Dublin area we would go over to Howth. This village is on the northern point of Dublin Bay so it is both isolated and accessible from Dublin. They have a lighthouse, a castle, and a lovely cliff walk. Lovely that is, in good weather. This day it was not. So we took a short walk to limber up after the long plane ride and then saw what we could from the car. After that we headed north.

_8504985 _8504989 _8504994-Edit One place I've been wanting to check out are the windmills at Skerries, just up the coast from Dublin. Windmills can make great subjects. We found the windmills very impressive but not terribly photogenic. At least that I could figure out. There was nothing to put in the foreground or show the context.

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I thought the local church & abbey made better pictures.

_8505028-Edit _8505024 Back on the road to Belfast. We arrived late afternoon and had accommodations on the tenth floor of an apartment building. Our balcony overlooked the great ship yards where the Titanic was built. Below would be our view for the next two days.

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Next morning we walked over to the Titanic museum. This is a pretty impressive place which starts telling the Titanic story with the development of the ship building industry in Belfast. It goes on to describe the methods for building these great ships, working conditions for the men (horrific) and some of the economics of the shipping industry. For instance, with all the emphasis on the ship's opulence one might assume that the luxury transatlantic trade was the raison d'etre for the ship being built. But it was actually built for the third class passengers. They paid the bills. The first class tickets were gravy. Anyway, all very interesting but not much to photograph besides other people's pictures. The ship itself is no longer here. (It sank). 

I will say the building itself makes an interesting subject. 

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After the museum (and lunch) we found a hop on & off tourist bus that took us around the rest of Belfast. The main thing to see are the neighborhoods where "The Troubles" of the 1969-1998 period were centered. There are Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods divided by a street with walls on both sides. The street is closed off at 6:30PM until 5:30AM and the walls are covered with graffiti.  There are still lots of outward signs of the conflict. Below is a wall mural of Bobby Sands who led a hunger strike in 1981 and died from it along with nine others. He remains a local hero/saint among the Catholics. 

_8505070 _8505086 _8505100 _8505101 _8505091 But Belfast is quiet for now. General prosperity has drained away a lot of what fed the animosity that fed The Troubles.

below is a slide show with more Belfast and Titanic Museum pictures. And below that is a video JM took as the bus drove along the wall. It gives you an idea how long this wall is and the commentary from the driver is interesting too.

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