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| Ready for the day to start! |
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| On our walk to meet up with our tour bus we saw some beautiful buildings in Dublin |
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| Trying to recreate the Titantic pose at the Titantic museum. I did not know that the Titantic was built in Ireland |
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| Rick left a Texas message on the walls that had divided the Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast |
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| Since my nickname was Paddywagon we thought it was pefect to take this tour. Our tour guide, Brian was fabulous |
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| Depicting the potato famine |
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| We were able to pretty much able to go around the entire island. We started at Dublin, stayed in Belfast, went to Derry, Donegal, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Killarney, Cork and back to Dublin. |
Day One we headed to Belfast and in so doing you leave the Republic of Ireland and head to Northern Ireland (under English Rule) It is a very divided place and has had loads of violence due to the Catholics wanting to have independece and the Protestants wanting to remain loyal to England. Years ago the English king planted Protestant loyalists in northern Ireland replacing the Irish famiies so that he could maintain control. It was called the Plantation period. In Belfast there was a wall that was built dividing the two communities. The name they give the recent conflicts was The Troubles and began in the 1960 and ended with a peace agreement in 1998. Lots of violence and torture went on during this time. Our tour guide said that most people think of it as a religious war but it was not. It was polictical, those wanting English rule and those wanting Independence.
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