episode #2

alright, onward.

so we traveled around the northern part of ireland, and eventually made our way into the republic of ireland. [by the way, just an interesting little tidbit--there are no signs demarcating the boundary between northern ireland and the republic of. this is because the republic doesn't recognize n.i. in any way. crazy stuff.]


here's a quick picture of the actual stepping stones from the giant's causeway. pretty cool.



as we worked our way toward galway, we stopped at these fairy bridges, where you can see one of the guys tossing a coin into that naturally shaped hole between the bridges...the story is that if you toss a coin (it's from further back than it looks) and it goes through that hole in particular, you will have beautiful babies.
if you miss, you can try again, but everytime you have to try anew, the denomination of your coin must rise. and no, there isn't a collection bucket on the bottom! as well, we stopped by dunluce castle ruins and climbed around a bit, then had our coffee/tea/biscuit break outside of the musendon temple. where i became obsessed with sheep pictures....

onto the walled city of derry and a hike to a waterfall on the path to lough belshade.
then donegal, with it's aforementioned bloody sunday site. and cap it all with a visit to a peat bog, where one of the girls sunk in up to her knees! oops....

next day was sligo, the inspirational setting of most of w.b. yeats' work. we also visited a children's potato famine graveyard there. a bit chilling. galway was more of a shopping stop than anything else, and this is actually the day that my camera flaked and all the pix from this day got deleted! BUGGER!

anyway, i was able to buy the claddagh ring i wanted in galway, the town from whence it was orignally created. guess which way i'm wearing it....

so then we traveled on to the musical town of doolin for the night. but before that we stopped at my very favorite scenic spot on the ireland part of my journey. and i have only one picture of it which did not get deleted. which naturally is one of the least impressive ones....but i'm hoping one of the folks who were with me will email me some of their shots when they return from their respective travels. at any rate, here's my one and only picture from the cliffs of moher. proof of a higher power if ever there was one.