Sligo was a short stop for us made for one very specific reason: family history. As mentioned, Dargan, my young nephew, was along for this trip; Dargan is a family name on my mom's side and has been used as various first and middle names throughout the generations thereof (read more here and here). The name is Irish in origin, and one of the reasons a trip to Ireland was even proposed was because of the Castle Dargan, and ancient ruined castle bearing the family name whose remains stood somewhere in the vicinity of Sligo.
Weirdly, as a tangent, that isn't my only connection to Castle Dargan. The church where as of this writing I'm directing the choir, Christ Church Cathedral, has a hallway with a number of plaques, and one day quite by chance I saw this one for the first time:
So not only is this place my namesake, but it is responsible for the beginning of the church where I work! Small world. It must be my destiny!
Anyway, today the Castle stands really more as a lawn ornament within a golf resort some 20 minutes outside of the town, which is where we elected to stay for this leg of the trip. We got in Monday toward evening and mainly spent the rest of the day eating and retiring to our rooms for sleep.
The next day was the big day, both exploring the town of Sligo and seeing the castle ruins. First, Sligo. We dropped Beth and Scott off at a bike shop where they rented bikes and spent the morning exploring the town and surrounding countryside. Myself, my parents, and Dargan explored the town as well, but bipedally.
My parents had picked out this wood shop to go to - where they heard about it I do not know - owned by a man named Michael Quirke. We walked in and he immediately began carving something for Dargan, asking him what his favorite animal was and setting to work:
He told stories and spun tales while he did it and astonishingly never even brought up items we could have paid money for. He just seemed happy to work and talk.
Next, we set about a walking tour - no bus to hop on and off of, this time. We followed a map as well as the physical markers embedded in the sidewalk to tell us we'd found the marked locations.
No joke, we went out of our way to see the library:
They use the same computer reservation software we use in Louisville! Shoulda asked for a guest pass.
We then went to the Sligo Abbey, the only thing we had to pay for during the whole tour:
It was built I believe they said in the 1200s? No wonder its roof is no longer there.
Then, to a church with a roof, the Sligo Cathedral:
I do love me some grand churches.
We met up with Beth and Scott at our pre-selected lunch spot, Knox, then drove back to the resort to make the walk, at long last, to the Castle Dargan.
The journey began just outside the resort:
Continued through the golf course:
And at last, we saw the ruins in the distance:
There's not much of the poor ol' castle left. This shot contains all of it; two lumps of stone with a stray window or two and not much else:
That's the family legacy I guess. Here's a plaque with poor grammar telling you far more than you'd ever want to know about this place:
And here's a contraband shot that I shouldn't have been able to take:
And so our journey to discover our ancestral homeland was complete. We celebrated with dinner back in town:
And that was about it for Sligo. Another quiet night back at the resort, and another morning, then it was off to our final destination for the trip: the capital of Ireland.
First summer in a long time with no Cardinal Singers trip to commemorate the end of a school year. But! I still managed to have some major international travel, thanks to a family trip to Ireland that had been in the works for about a year.
We flew into Dublin, leaving the US on the 30th and arriving on the 31st, then rented a car and drove immediately to Belfast, capital of the territory of Northern Ireland, part of the UK. Along for the ride were my parents, my sister, her husband, and their young child, Dargan. This was a true blue family trip, possibly the last one ever, as Dargan approaches school age and has less availability for things like this for about, ohhh, 17 or so years, by which time my parents may decide they are uninterested in travel to far-flung destinations.
We arrived in Belfast early afternoon and took to a brief walkabout to get the lay of the land once bags had been dropped in hotel rooms. We went by the river that passed in front of our hotel:
Which has a bridge called Dargan Bridge, which Dargan was happy pose in front of:
And also a big fish:
whose official name is the Salmon of Knowledge. This makes sense.
A little more from the walkabout:
We then stopped at the oldest building in Belfast, which currently houses the McHugh's Bar:
Our first pint in Ireland! Which, after the jetlag of getting there, was enough to make me want to go to bed at 3:30 in the afternoon. But I didn't; I pushed through like you're supposed to onto our next stop, a brewery called Boundary:
where we had probably the most delicious beer of the trip. Unfortunately, I can't remember which one it was. Maybe the stout?
Anyway, we then made our way back to the hotel on foot, stopping by a fish and chips place, where we got basically one of everything on the menu for an impromptu feast.
Some scenes from our walk back:
Then at last, it was time for sleep. The next morning, we got breakfast at the hotel then made our way to the hop on/hop off bus and spent most of the day seeing the sights along that tour path. The first hop-off for us was the Belfast parliament building:
and surrounding grounds:
Then we hopped on and hopped off at St. George's Market, which was a gigantic flea-market type place that sold just about everything imaginable:
Then another two hops, and a visit to Queens University:
Where there was some sort of convention or festival going on, leading to weirdly dressed people, the bane of my existence:
On the grounds of the University we saw the botanical garden:
And the Ulster Museum, which I really dug:
I loved that they combined art, science, and history into one museum and sort of blended the sections as you ascended through them. History continued backwards in time until it became prehistory, where it then melded into geology and flora and fauna, the starting point for the science exhibits. Stupendous.
We then ventured back into the town area and found a place to get a pint:
Here, we split up, as I wanted to see some of the bigger churches in the area, so my half took another brief set of hops to St. Anne's Cathedral:
and St. Patrick's Church:
Then a brief hotel stop, then dinner at a place called Made in Belfast.
Monday morning was the end of Belfast. We checked out and hit the road once again, driving an hour north to the landmark I was most excited to see on this whole trip, the Giant's Causeway. This is an odd spot of naturally occurring hexagonal rocks that jut up against each other to form a bit of a bridge out into the sea.
First, though, the hike to get there. You can go either the upper or lower way; we chose the upper, along the cliffs and with the better view:
I've never been to the cliffs of Moher, and we didn't go on this trip, but from photos I've seen it seems like a similar area. Very green, very big juts of land that drop into the ocean.
Atop the hills, we also got to see the stereotypical rolling Irish scenery:
The lower road, for perspective:
Then at the end of the upper trail, a rickety, winding path took us down to the water:
It was misting and raining all morning, so the trek down was a bit slippery and treacherous.
Midway down I took a video to capture the apocalyptic wave-crashing that echoed off the cliff walls:
Then at last made it to the Causeway itself:
See? Hexagonal! Mostly.
I ventured out to the edge, where the stones turn black, and got about this far:
...before getting yelled at.
A few more shots to give you some sense of scale, since the formation stretches out quite a bit:
And here's the giant's boot:
With the Causeway fully explored, we marched back, this time on the low road:
and got a much-enjoyed lunch at the Bushmills Inn, in town:
before loading up the car and departing for points west.
