Londonderry

October 7, 2012

Well, Annie O’Brian is on groundation!  We went from Ireland to Northern Ireland and she quit and went off the job.  If only we could get our Irish phone and Tep wi-fi to work also.  Maybe we could get something fixed.  Why is it that the car, phone and internet went down all at the same moment we came into the United Kingdom?  Must be something to do with pounds vs. euros. 

Here is another picture from the window of our B&B.  And also one of a red hydrangea   They are everywhere here and I've never seen a red one.  

But I jumped ahead.  We left the B&B this morning and went to the Donegal Castle.  It was very interesting.  And since all of Ireland was at church, except us, we had the place to ourselves.  It was built by Hugh O’Donnell one of a long line of O’Donnell’s in the early 1600s.  Then the British came over and routed the Irish, so the O’Donnell’s burned the place down rather than let it go to the English.  Stone is hard to burn down, so the British gave the castle and lands surrounding it to Mr. Brooke.  He fixed the place up and the Brookes’ lived there until it fell into disrepair in the 1800s.  Then the city of Donegal took it over and they have been fixing it up.  I stood on the ground in front of the castle and thought of the thousands of people whose lives had gone on there.  I felt very small and insignificant. 

We left Donegal and drove through Dunkineely and Bruckless to get to Killybegs.  Killybegs is Ireland’s largest seaport and we’ve been eating all sorts of delicious seafood from there.  As we entered into Killybegs we came upon a bad odor.  Ah, the sign says it all “Killybeg’s Sewage Scheme.”  It was a nice seaport. 

Then onto Ardara and Glenties, passing alongside the Derryveagh mountains.  We went through Conwal, Lettermacaward, and Commeen to get to the Glenveagh National Park on our way to Letterkenny.  The landscape was very desolate.  Even though the road was only one lane, it was fairly easy driving as the only creatures around were sheep and they just wanted to eat the scrub brush.  We had a little trouble as Annie was acting up and not helping us to go the way we wanted to and then the road sign were only in Gaelic.  But we persevered and finally got to Letterkenny.  (This would be a great place to keep the BBOY hidden.)

We had a delicious lunch at the Yellow Pepper restaurant.  I had goat cheese parcels and BC had 3 different crostini’s with various toppings.  Fun.  We left Letterkenny and drove through Manorcunningham and Speenoge.  We made it just outside Derry when Annie went on strike. Derry is a fairly large city and our written directions to get to the Everglades Hotel were written coming from Belfast which is the opposite way we were going.  We got lost but found our way again.  There are roundabouts every 20 feet.  (They are called roundabouts here in the UK.  In Ireland there are called rotaries.)  BC says he is going to go out and run around our hotel in a counter clockwise motion for a while just to unwind……..oh wait, he just said instead he is going to continue his Irish whiskey sampling plan.   That should do the same thing.

Bc just went downstairs to ask the hotel to call Hertz to see how to convince Annie to break her strike.  He also bought 90 minutes of internet.  We’ll see how that goes! 

Take care, bc and gc

PS.  We weren’t able to fix Annie O’Brian as she refused to cross over to the UK/Northern Ireland.  Bc finally got someone at Hertz to help us and we now have Annie Smythe to assist us while in Northern Ireland.  Because of the internet snafu we weren’t able to post this blog last night and will do it tonight now that we are in Belfast.  Stay tuned for today’s adventures!

PPS.  Andy, your dad bought and drank Powers Whiskey.

PPPS.  We are having a very difficult time uploading pictures.  It's taking about 15 minutes per picture and then sometimes we aren't successful.  So, please check back.  Hopefully we will get our Tep to work and maybe we can find some sort of internet that is faster!