June 20 - Ulster American Folk Park

I was really looking forward to today, and the Folk Park turned out to be even better than I expected. I have Scottish ancestors who were brought to Northern Ireland in the 1600s to tip the balance in favor of Protestantism, and emigrated from there to Pennsylvania. This folk park was all about those people and later emigrants. It started with cottages brought in from various areas in Northern Ireland.

The middle of the walking tour was like a seaport area where you walked thru a ship and out the other side in America. One of the shops on the Irish side of the seaport was a general store - we thought it was cool that the tea, sugar, flour, etc. was packaged in different colors so that the shoppers (mostly illiterate) could tell what they were buying.

Then the last part of the walk had cabins and houses of Scot-Irish settlers brought over from Penn, Virginia and Tennessee and reconstructed there. It was all very well-done and very interesting - spent about 6 hours there altogether!.

June 19 - On Our Own!

Well, it wasn’t always pretty but we managed to rent a car, drive 100 miles on the wrong side of the road to Omagh in Northern Ireland, and find our B & B. It’s a great old country house in the middle of woods and fields and we enjoyed doing a little exploring before retiring to our comfortable room to relax and get ready for tomorrow.

Arch of Irish Yew Trees we discovered on our walk.

Clanabogan Country House B & B

 

June 18 - Last Day of Coach Tour

On our way back to London we made one final stop at Blenheim Palace - another huge, over-the-top place that I can’t imagine living in! This one was owned by the Churchill family - Winston Churchill didn’t live there (his father was a younger son and didn’t inherit it) but he was born there because his mother went into premature labor while visiting. We did learn the difference between a castle and a palace - a castle was fortified and built for protection, while palaces are built to show off wealth and position. These people apparently had lots to show off!

This was just the center section - there were huge wings on each side too!

Beautiful gardens

Then it was time to say goodbye to our friends on the coach tour and get ready to fly to Dublin tomorrow. We stayed overnight in the same hotel in London, but this time we had a great view from our window.

June 16 - On to England

Last stop in Scotland was Floors Castle, the largest inhabited castle in Scotland. The current duke is a young man with a bunch of cute kids - hard to imagine them running around in that elegant place!

Hadrian’s Wall was built by the Romans almost 2000 years ago when they occupied England - it was supposed to keep out the wild Picts up in the Scottish Highlands. There are some places where you can still see what’s left of the wall and we stopped at one of them.

On to York, England then - a great old city that still has quite a bit of its city walls, and several narrow old streets lined with 14 and 15^th century shops and homes. Fun to wander around there.

June 17 - Stratford and Avon

This was one of my favorite days! First stop was the home of Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, near Stratford upon Avon. We didn’t go inside, just took quick photos of the thatched-roof house and the beautiful gardens.

We did tour Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford, also with a lovely garden, and spent an hour or so there in the shops.

Just a few miles from Stratford is a beautiful area called the Cotswolds - an important sheep-raising and wool selling area until the Industrial Revolution. The world passed them by and it still looks a lot like it did 200 years ago - lots of thatched-roof cottages and little English gardens. We had tea and scones with jam and Devon cream in a 15^th century tavern and then explored the area.

 

 

Look at the detail in this thatching!

June 15 - Edinburgh

This morning we got a driving tour of the city and spent some time in Edinburgh Castle at one end of the Royal Mile and Holyrood Palace at the other end. The Queen will be in residence at Holyrood in a week so we were lucky to get to see it before they closed it for her visit.

The Castle

The Castle

Holyrood Palace

After a snack and resting our feet for awhile, we went back out on foot and explored the New Town (from the 1700s) and the Old Town (from the 1500s!!) It's an amazing town with great old buildings everywhere you look.

We walked down the Royal Mile some more, and had dinner at an old pub where Gary finally got his haggis, which came with neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes). He thought it was very good, and I thought it wasn’t as bad as I expected!

June 14 - On the way to Edinburgh

A long bus day! Had lunch in Braemar, a quaint little town that is the site of the Royal Highlad Games, although we didn’t see where the games are actually held.

Also stopped in St. Andrews - all the golfers on the tour were excited about this one. We took a photo of the 18^th hole and then walked up the street to a hotel and had tea and sticky toffee pudding - my new favorite dessert!

Arrived in Edinburgh about dinnertime so we walked to the area called the Royal Mile and had something to eat and strolled around a little ogling all the wonderful old buildings.