The Drive Into Glamis Castle

This was a wonderful castle and the drive down to it has been documented extensively on YouTube. So, of course, I just had to add my two cents. Unfortunately, the windshield (or screen as they’re called in the UK) was quite dirty.

If you listen closely at the end, I am finally giving it the correct pronunciation and it is given approval by Helen (who was driving) from Afternoon Tea Tours.

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VIDEO: A Tribute to Our Celtic Connections

I have loved the lyrics to this song for many years and always imagine a young wife saying and writing this to her husband as he leaves for America. Or a mother to her son…basically anyone who was brave enough to leave everything they’ve always known and held dear for the unknown across the ocean.

With the family history Dave has uncovered for both of our families, and the places we went while in Northern Ireland and the historical documents we read and touched, this song had even more meaning to me.

Home

We started the day eating danishes in Dublin, and ended the day waiting for a delayed bus in Portland, Maine to take us the rest of the way home.

After a thoroughly enjoyable cab ride to the Dublin airport, we were whisked through not one, but two security checks. The 2nd being a USA pre-clearance check. We passed.

The wind was whipping in Dublin today and it was a little scary watching planes land and wobbling around, but our flight took off without a hitch.

I watched a movie and played games to help pass the time. I THINK I also slept a little bit. The meals again were terrific. Very tasty. We even got afternoon tea with a lovely chicken and cheese wrap and a brownie. And TEA this time.

We ended up taking an earlier bus from Logan Airport and it was a good thing we did. Our 2nd bus was very delayed due to afternoon traffic. To Dave and I, our bodies are telling us it’s almost mid-night but it’s almost 7 p.m. here in Maine. We’re ready to hit our own bed.

I’ll be posting videos and reviews of places we stayed and other pertinent travel stuff in the next couple of days if anyone is interested.

Final Call

I wish I could have bottled up the complete and utter Irishness of the taxi cab driver this morning from the hotel to airport. Could have listened to him all day. Just lovely. I’d like that voice and lilt to be the voice of my GPS. Would be so much fun. We’re at the airport, ready to do. I miss my own beds and pillows, clean clothes, and especially our kitty cats. Sounds like it has been very warm back home.

Buses, People, and Pints! Oh, my!

Dave and I left Belfast early this morning by train to Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland. For those of you who don’t understand what that means, it means the island of Ireland is actually two countries: Northern Ireland, which is actually a part of the United Kingdom (UK) and the Republic of Ireland, which is independently ruled with it’s own government. We’ve spent the last week and a half in Northern Ireland, which include Belfast and today we crossed the border into the Republic of Ireland which includes Dublin. Got it? If not…Google it! 🙂

Now that we’re clear on that, Dave’s and I have enjoyed train travel in Europe so much before, we booked first class tickets for this short, two- hour ride to Dublin. We also got an awesome breakfast on the train and I was able to catch up on my blog from the previous day. Duncan also came out for a visit.

Still an overcast kind of day, but it wasn’t raining when arrived in Dublin and the taxi driver found our hotel for the night at the Albany House. We were able to check in early to freshen up then we took the hop-on-hop-off bus around the city, which has kind of become our “thing to do” in each big city we’ve visited to get a lay of the land and layout of the city.

Our first observations are that Dublin truly exemplifies the words “bustling city” and then some. THIS is a thriving, alive city with many shops and restaurants and a LOT of energetic, young people. There are also a LOT of bicycles.

After going through every stop, we finally got off the bus at the Guinness Storehouse. You’re greeted inside the doors with the 9,000 year lease Arthur Guinness signed. There was a wax seal by his signature. The lease is inside a sunken area of the floor covered in glass.

THEN there are 7 floors of wonderfulness explaining everything about Guinness from the temperature the barley is roasted at, to the advertising designs they have used over the years.

It’s all a self-guided tour and there were a LOT of people there so getting around from floor to floor proved a hassle at times. We did a great beef sandwich at one of their restaurants and then a free pint on the top floor at the Gravity a Bar overlooking the city. I loved it, but we were both tuckered out. Old and out of shape!!

Overall we loved Dublin even though we did’t get to experience much of it. I’d visit again for sure.

Guinness is good!

It’s the last day of our vacation as we fly out tomorrow (Thursday)

Rivets and Icebergs

For our last day in Belfast and Northern Ireland, we chose the Titanic Belfast attraction. Titanic Belfast is a visitor attraction opened in 2012, a monument to Belfast’s maritime heritage on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard in the city’s Titanic Quarter where the RMS Titanic was built. It tells the stories of the ill-fated Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank during her maiden voyage in 1912, and her sister ships RMS Olympic and HMS Britannic. The building contains more than 130,000 sq ft of floor space, most of which is occupied by a series of galleries, private function rooms and community facilities.

Dave and I grabbed a taxi from the hotel and decided on the deluxe tour. We purchased the White Star Premium Pass which offered us discounts in two restaurants and gift store and entry to the attraction as well as an hour walking tour and entrance to the Nomadic, tender boat.

We had a couple of hours before our guided tour, so we were outfitted with headphones and started on the very extensive, multi-floor exhibition. They begin with conditions in Belfast in the early 1900’s and how the company was formed, how the ship’s plans were created and the how the ship was built.

There was even a gentle, but very clever ride, reminiscent of Disney ride showing the building process with narration of a riviter behind it. Such backbreaking work in the shipyard.

Each display was VERY well done going into as much detail as you wanted or as little. Every floor was crowded, but not to the point you couldn’t get to each visual and enjoy it.

Obviously, the end of that fateful cruise was looming and they did a wonderful job of showering the hard work each shipyard worker endured and how the design of the ship was created using the best materials available to them at the time.

As that fateful day neared, the rooms darkened and the tone changed from hopeful and excited to dread and fear as the alerts about icebergs were sent…ignored, then disaster as a result. One felt your heart grow heavy as you listened to first-hand accounts from survivors as you looked at some of the last photographs of the ship ever recorded frozen in time.

We had to end our tour right then because the guided tour was about to start. Libby, our guide, was a perky Irish Lass who told us about a lot of the symbolism surrounding the construction of the attraction and took us through the Harland and Wolf buildings where the designs of Titanic were drawn. Those buildings are now a very expensive hotel.

There was amazing attention-to-detail put into the design of the attraction as well as the grounds surrounding it. The wooden benches outside spelled out the last message of Morse code from the Titanic. The outline of the entire ship was embedded into the pavement where the ship sat under construction. I was a amazed how narrow it actually was, but it was very long.

There were vertical steel beams to indicate where the Titanic and her sister ship, the Olympic would has sat in the shipyard. However, they indicated the height of these beams were only about a quarter of the actual height of each ship.

Even the design of the main building itself represented the full height of the bows (front) of each ship and they were covered with thousands of steel plates representing the workers. Really well done.

Of course most everyone is aware of some of the “famous/rich” people who were on board like the Asters, Molly Brown, etc., but our guide told us about the Sage family. They had 11 members of their family on board. All went down with the ship. Only one body was recovered….a 12-year old boy from the family. All of those stories need to be told.

After the guided tour, Dave and I enjoyed lunch in one of the four cafes and had a terrific ham and cheese quiche. Then we continued with the rest of the exhibit.

They continue with the inquests after the sinking including the findings in the number of life boats which no doubt resulted in numerous deaths. The movies made about the sinking and the technical advancements in not only ship building, but underwater discoveries were also explored.

A highlight for me was the astonishing way they displayed the wreckage in the sea floor. They had a glass floor in a darkened theater and lit the scanned images underneath it as if you were in a submersible floating over there ghostly wreckage. It was brilliant and sad.

The last part of the tour was spent touring the SS Nomadic. It’s the last remaining ship of the White Star line sitting in dry dock. It was mainly used a tender to transfer passengers from ship to shore and transferred passengers from Titanic on it’s last stop in France before it sunk. The last time for many to be on dry land.

We were both pretty pooped after a long day on our feet, so we grabbed a taxi back to the hotel and decided to eat dinner in the hotel for the first time. It was great and I asked to take a piece of lemon meringue pie back to the room. They wrapped up a plate including a pitcher of cream for me to take.

Oh, and I now have Dave’s cold. Cheers!