Monday May 14,

Time to be heading home and we had the whole day to get back to Dublin. One of our primary goals for this trip was to do a little family research for the Conners. Rollie's ancestral home is Castlepollard in County Westmeath, which is right on the way to Dublin. So we pulled in there to do some snooping. First we checked out the great manor house at Tullynally Castle. (love the name!) The purpose of this visit was to reconnoiter the place so that in the event we discover that Rollie actually is the rightful heir, we'll have a plan to expel the squatters. 

_8508925 Boo was not enthused. Her take was that until 2028 Victor St is completely and totally finished he has no business taking on a project like this. This dampened our enthusiasm. We then spent about an hour at the local library talking to their resident genealogy guru and concluded there were no more Conners in this area. Darn! I was hoping we could at least get a free lunch out of them. Back on the road to Dublin we took a look at the map and saw that we would be passing near Trim Castle. It looked like a good place to check out and as it turned out it was!  _8508931 If the place looks vaguely familiar it might be because it has been the location for a number of movies. The most recent big movie shot here was Braveheart. 

_8508936 _8508956 _8508992 The construction of the castle was started early in the Norman period by Hugh de Lacy, one of the first wave of Normans. The castle is sited alongside the River Boyne and the grounds on both sides of the river are now a park with walking trails. It is one of the few castles in Ireland that still has most of the outer wall intact and everything here is original to the Middle Ages. 

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_8509061 Just alongside the castle was a herd of donkeys for the tourists to pet and feed.

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Despite all of these side trips we still got into Dublin in time for another outing so we drove back over to Howth, where this trip started. This time we had better weather. The ferries and cruise ships were just heading out.

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And this was the end of a very excellent trip to Ireland. Thank you for coming along. Stay tuned though, as I will still be posting some black & white images soon.