Northern Ireland Part I: Derry

This weekend I went to Northern Ireland, which is actually a separate country from the Republic of Ireland and is instead a part of the United Kingdom. We departed Wednesday afternoon and spent the next four hours on the bus. We stopped at W.B. Yeats’ grave where JD read us one of his poems. We then continued until we arrived in Derry, or as some call it, Londonderry. Our hostel this weekend was amazing, it was only the students from CSB/SJU in the house. When we got to Derry, we ate supper and then Jacquie, our Archeology professor, took us to Peader’s Pub which had traditional Irish music. 

Ring Fort

The next morning we went to Grianan of Aileach, a ring fort in Donnegal. I later found out that this was the fort of the Lords of the O’Doherty clan, so I was looking at the place that my ancestors may have lived! I also learned that they were a very influential family in Ireland. Jacquie told me that there were Dohertys all over the area and looking out from the top of the fort, we could see all the land they once ruled! After we left the ring fort we went to the Tower Museum that chronicles the history of Derry starting with the origins of a monastery there. Again, I learned more about the O’Doherty family. There were flags hanging up and even though we weren’t supposed to take pictures, the tour guide said I should get one of the O’Doherty family crest flag. I learned the O’Dohertys were one of the leading Gaelic families in Derry in the Middle Ages. They built a new castle in Derry around AD 1500 and the Tower Museum is a modern attempt to replicate the castle close to the site of the original one. The O’Doherty sword was in the museum and the caption underneath it read, “ A two-handed ‘Ferrara’ steel sword. The scabbard is leather and brass. The sword is traditionally said to have been owned by Sir Cahir O’Doherty. O’Doherty was killed on 5^th July 1608. His severed head was displayed in Dublin.”

O'Doherty Flag

Sir Cahir O'Doherty's sword

After lunch, we went to the Museum of Free Derry, a personal account of the Bloody Sunday massacre that occurred on Jaunary 30^th 1972. Before coming to Derry, I only knew a little bit about the Troubles and the tension between Catholics and Protestants but this weekend I learned a lot. Jacquie is catholic so she gave us her perspective on the tragedy. Free Derry was called that because it was the place that was never invaded by the army. On January 30^th, the people of Derry had intended to hold a peaceful civil rights parade. The weather was nice and Catholics came to march around town in a protest of the British. There were men, women, children, and people of all ages. What they had thought was going to be a nonviolent demonstration turned into a disaster. Fourteen people died, six of them were only 17 years old, four were in their twenties. Jacquie’s brother was with his best friend, Gerald Donaghy, who was shot and died later that day. In 2010 the British government admitted and apologized for Bloody Sunday and stated the people who died were innocent besided Gerald Donaghy who had nail bombs in his pockets. To this day, many are convinced that he was planted with the bombs by police officers and from what Jacquie and another woman at the museum said, it didn’t seem logical that he would have had them.

After we went to the museum, we walked around Derry and Jacquie showed us various political murals around Free Derry. It is clear that the people are still feeling the hurt of this event and when we toured the city walls, it was evident she was slightly uncomfortable going into the Protestant section. She told us that they stay on their side and she stays on hers. It was a little bit difficult for us to fathom because to us, Catholic and Protestant isn’t all that different. But it isn’t necessarily their religion that differs between them but the attitudes and elitism that were practiced by the Protestants. All of this was completely new to me but I learned a ton in a couple of short hours.

Mural

On Thursday we toured the Old Bushmills whisky distillery where we learned how they make whisky and got the chance to sample a few of their different kinds. After this we headed to Giant’s Causeway, one of the places I was most excited to see while in Ireland. Giant’s Causeway is a rock formation created by a volcanic eruption. There are 40,000 basalt column jutting up out of the ocean to form this awesome site. It is called Giant’s Causeway because legend has it that Finn MacCool built this staircase to fight the mighty Scottish giant on the other side of the ocean but when he saw Finn, he was afraid so he ripped up the causeway so that Finn couldn't get to Scotland, leaving the formations we see today. It was beautiful! We climbed the stairs up to the top of the lookout and it was incredible!

Hexagonal Columns

Northern Ireland Part II: Belfast

The second part of our trip to Northern Ireland we were in Belfast. We were a little nervous going there because we had heard about some rioting in the weeks preceding our visit. There was rioting because Protestants and Catholics hold parades throughout the year and they sing songs and march in each other’s areas. A parade commission was started so that they could regulate where people marched and they wouldn’t be marching in each other’s residential regions. Some people decided that they weren’t going to follow these regulations and that is what caused a stir in Belfast. Jacquie assured us that we were staying in a safe area though and we wouldn’t have any trouble. Our hostel was near Queen’s University so there were lots of students out at night. It was Fresher’s Week, which is where all the students come back to school, and the freshmen have their first week of college so it was fun.

On Saturday we had a guided bus tour of Belfast and we learned about The Troubles there too. A lot of the information was similar but we went through different parts of the city that were segregated by high walls. The walls were high enough so that you wouldn’t be able to throw anything from one side to the next. Our tour guide told us that they did a survey on both sides asking if people wanted the walls down and about 20% said definitely take them down, 20% said absolutely not keep them up, and the rest said they should be taken down but that they weren’t ready for them to be down yet and to wait. In my lifetime, I have learned about segregation but I have never seen it so clearly as it was in Northern Ireland.

Later that day we went to the brand new Titanic Experience. The Titanic was built in Belfast and it is one of the reasons that the city grew and maintained its workforce. We went through its building, sinking, and discovery. Since its new, it was very busy but it was a really cool museum. It had tons of interactive components; my favorite part was looking down into a glass floor and seeing a virtual video of the Titanic in the ocean!

            This has been my favorite excursion so far; I learned a lot about the politics of Northern Ireland and I also got to see a bunch of amazing sites!

            

Killarney, Ring of Kerry, and Cliffs of Moher

This weekend we went on a long excursion from Thursday until Sunday. We left the Park Lodge early Thursday morning and headed to Killarney which is south of Galway about two hours. First we went to Ross castle, a 16^th century castle that has been restored so that visitors can see what the castle would have looked like and how they would have lived back then. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the inside but the castle was totally equipped for battle. The people who would have lived in the castle when it was built would have been constantly fighting with others in the surrounding area, mostly for cattle. The doors were built with the wood planks going horizontally on one side and then vertically on the other so that people couldn’t chop them down with an ax. They also had spikes coming out of them so you couldn’t run into the door and knock it down. From the second story there were holes in the floor where defenders could throw boiling water down to the front door and other things to fight attackers off. The stairs were also different heights so that people running up them would be unfamiliar with them and trip. The stairs were also in a spiral that wound upward to the right so that if two people were having a swordfight, the person on the higher steps would be free to swing his sword in his right hand while the attacker would be swinging into the railing and the stairs above. The doorways were incredibly short and this was so a person would hit their head if they were rushing in to conquer the castle tower. All of these things indicate how much fighting was going on during that time.

Ross Castle

We stayed at Neptunes Hostel in Killarney which we liked much better than the Jamaica Inn. They were really clean and the showers were hot! The next day we went to Muckross House, which was one of my favorite things we did all weekend. It’s a Victorian mansion built as a wedding gift by William Burn. It was also visited by queen Victoria in 1851 and later sold to Arthur Guinness and later given to the state. We toured the inside of the castle but again, we couldn’t take any pictures. It was an amazing house with a ton of rooms, high ceilings, beautiful furniture, bells for the servants, and incredible views.  

Muckross House

Muckross House's back yard!

After this we toured the Ring of Kerry, stopping along the way to take pictures and also to visit the Skellig Experience. The Skellig Islands are two islands off the coast that were once inhabited by a huge monastery for 600 years.

Ring of Kerry

Saturday we went to the Kerry County Museum where there was a tour of medieval Kerry that included the sights, sounds and awful smells of the time period. We then drove along the Dingle Peninsula. The road was up high on a cliff and our bus driver, Gerald, nicked the side of a vehicle in one tight spot. We weren’t sure we were going to make it through the tight corner and were kind of worried we were about to plummet into the ocean but Gerry, being an incredibly skilled driver, got us through and to the Blasket Center where we learned about the Blasket Islands and the people who lived there. On the island they only spoke Irish and writers, poets, and linguists came to the island to learn about their unique way of life and to hear the lost language.

That night we went the National Theater of Ireland where we viewed the play, Clann Lir. It was entirely in Irish but from reading the description we knew what was going on. All the people there besides our group and Kathy and Judy had grey hair but it was actually really cool. There was traditional Irish dancing and the story is an Irish legend!

Sunday we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which is one of the top tourist attractions in Ireland. It is also the spot that a scene from Harry Potter was shot! We went out on a boat into the sea and I was 90% sure we were going to tip over and topple into the ocean but we managed to see the cliffs which were AWESOME! Then we went up to the top of the cliffs and got to view them from there as well!

I had a great weekend touring County Kerry and on Wednesday we head to Northern Ireland for another long weekend!