Adventures in Ireland

Our morning started out great, with Margaret, the delightful B&B proprietor, treating us to fresh fruit salad with honeycomb yogurt, followed by poached eggs on toast for breakfast.  The eggs were fresh from the hens roosting in her backyard.

As they say in Scotland…..BRILLIANT!

Margaret was a real character, but, for the first time in my Scottish travels, I had difficulty understanding the language.  She spoke with a really unusual accent, but I'm not complaining, because somehow, through the course of the conversation, she decided to offer us the upgraded room at no extra charge. We had been perfectly content with our original reservation, but she insisted that we take the larger, more comfortable room.

Now…..how nice was that?  

You may be wondering what sparked our interest in traveling to Ireland.  The answer is a simple one:  genealogy.  Most of you know that I love researching family history, and, as it turns out, Marty has Irish blood in him.

Marty's great grandmother was Mary Harvey who was born in Frosses, just a short distance from Donegal Town, near where we are staying. Several years ago,  I had received the name and address of a woman named Annie Burke (nee Harvey).  She actually lives on the Harvey homestead.  She was delighted to hear from me, and we have been corresponding since.  Annie is actually Mary Harvey's first cousin, the perfect person to fill me in on the Harvey genealogy.

But, Annie is in her 90's, and Marty and I knew that if we wanted to meet her, we'd have to make the opportunity, so I set up this trip.  Annie has been frail, and, as it turned out, we received an e-mail this morning telling us that she was in the hospital.

But, the trip was already set up, so we decided to continue as planned and hopefully get to visit Annie in the hospital.  So, we packed up the car and got ready for our adventure.

As I mentioned, it was super easy finding the P&O ferry entrance. We arrived the required 45 minutes early, boarded and left promptly at 10:30, our scheduled departure time.

We had been concerned about sea sickness, but the ferry is like a luxury liner on the inside.  

You can see how beautiful the day was as we passed one lighthouse on the right

then another on the left.  

It took just about 2 hours for the journey, but with comfy seats by the window, and relatively calm seas, the time went by quicker than I had expected.

We approached the port of Larne, on the east coast of Ireland.

And then we watched the front part of the ferry rise up, so that the vehicles could just drive straight out onto the road.

Isn't modern technology awesome?  I never realized that traveling from Scotland to Ireland could be so entertaining.....and easy, for that matter.

Once in Ireland, though,  I was a bit surprised by the aggressiveness of the drivers. We hadn't seen that kind of craziness while traveling through Scotland!  It certainly takes some getting used to.

And, another point of interest to me, of which I had been unaware, is that some people in the western part of County Donegal speak Irish.  And, if you thought that Irish was actually English as I did then  you should know that it is actually a form of a Celtic language.  Many of the road signs here are written in Irish (which definitely explained our difficulty finding the location of our B&B, Ard na Breathe).

Here's just one example of the same town listed in Irish and in English.

Now, perhaps my blog followers will comment that they knew that these were two different languages, just like so many knew about Dolly the sheep and her namesake.  But, I was completely unaware of this language difference, and I certainly felt that it was worth sharing to those of you who just might have not known.

Our B&B, once we found it, proved to be delightful.

Here's the view from our bedroom window

 

We settled into our room, then decided to walk into town for dinner.  (Definitely safer than driving)

We passed the castle, which we'll probably tour tomorrow.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't post this lovely photo of a church all lit up in the town.

We decided to try the Castle Bar for dinner, which certainly had some entertaining wall decor.

And,  more importantly, the meal was Fabulous!

But the most entertaining part of the evening was the obvious excitement of the clientele in the bar at seeing white smoke on the tellie.  It was the buzz of the night, with the head waiter so excited to share the news that white smoke had been seen at the vatican.  There was a new Pope!  

Who knew that there would be so many religious enthusiasts in the pub? Wouldn't it be great if the average Irish driver was thinking about religion while driving down the road?  Perhaps it would be a lot less stressful!!