county down pt 1

hallo! and welcome to more fun times in ireland with me, your guide.

in this exciting installment we travel to the mysterious and dangerous land of northern ireland. that's right, we are off to the UK (kind of), to see things in the land of down. county down to be precise, and what a trip it will be. or was. i guess tehnically i already went. hmmm...i seem to be failing in my guide duties already. allow me to take a long time to ponder what it means to be a "dutiful" guide, and end it by shooting either myself or you. (anyone? anyone? 10 points who gets the reference)

so yeah, dad and i went to county down to try and find the family farm. kind of. our great-something descendent, danial magorian, was supposedly from the town of downpatrick, in county down, so we went off to see what we could find, and maybe even find some long lost relatives. so, we started out our trip with the exciting task of learning to drive on the left. dad developed a mantra of "on the left, herman", whenever pulling out into traffic. go dad go.

anyway, after the interstate, we took a scenic route and drove along the coast, which was very nice, and our first stop was castlewellan, where we stayed the night. not right then, but we ate lunch at the inn where we were staying. it was a very cool inn, and reminded me of the inn at bree in LOTR. decent food. good atmosphere.

after lunch we went on to downpatrick, which was kind of a big disappointment, because we ran into...consumerism. i found the first safeway we've seen so far, and lots of big chains, and other stuff. oh, and i found all the skater kids on the island. literally, they were everywhere, and completely indistiguishable from american skater kids, except they were complaining about their parents in an accent. go figure.

anyway, we went to the sites in downpatrick, which included down cathedral, the mound of down (really, it's just a mound), inch abbey, and mcgorrian's jewelry, which we determined was not the right magorian. the next day we just took a scenic route back, including getting lost a few times. oh well.
a fun trip, and here are some pictures:



this is the front of down cathedral. i think technically it's called the cathedral of the holy trinity, but so are half the cathedrals in ireland, so it's really down cathedral.



this is the alter inside the cathedral. it's very impressive looking, and apparently it is one of the last cathedrals to use private pews. so finally, the rich can seek salvation without having to sit by those damned to hell and poverty. (not meaning to offend any catholics out there) anyway, the lady at the gift shop here was the one who pointed us in ther direction of the jewelry store, which was very nice of her. she and dad had quite the conversation, although both were fighting to get a word in, both quite the talkers, these two.



the other famous thing about downpatrick, and down cathedral is that it is the supposed burial spot of saint patrick. and as we all know, he not only drove all the snakes out of ireland, he brought (christian) religion, which brought about a large part of the lovely feud going on in ireland to this day. thanks pat. although, i suppose the whole reformation thing had something to do with the split. but this is his grave, i think it's nice and simple. at first i was worried about finding it in the graveyard because it was rather big, but lo and behold there was a big sign "this way to saint patrick's grave" go figure.



this is a lovely long distance shot of the cathedral. i titled it my "postcard shot", because look at it. it could totally be a postcard for ireland. you have the stone wall, the oak tree, the pond with the swans, and the old cathedral on the hill. call hallmark, i can make millions.

so, there are many more pictures, so keep on scanning down and more you shall see...