Fir Trees Newry

... to be suddenly confronted with the City Hall in all its archetectural splendour. Next comes a rather mundane road with local shops which suddenly turns into a hive of evening activity with bars, restaurants and crowds of people on the streets.

I escaped unharmed with an overall impression that actually its quite a nice place and no more threatning than any other city.

Met my group I am working with this week and within 5 minutes they all knew where I was from and where I was staying and my inside leg measurement (just kidding on that last one :) )

"Ah, so you're at the Dufferin. You'll be knowing Frank then"

Is there anywhere to hide around here?

One of ...

Okay the plans are well underway now! We spent the weekend mock packing and trying to work out what we still need to bring and how we can begin to lighten the load a little. All advice seems to suggest not to bring too much, to "pack and then half it" but it doesn't seem so simple when we are actually trying to do it! Conor is finding it much easier than me! I just know I'm going to be ...

A quick trip along the coast before returning to the hotel.

A nice little coastline.

I did get caught in a police roadblock. Luckily, I have a UK license. Made it a breeze to get through without many questions. Curious to find out what they were looking for.

A monastic settlement has the ruins of a medieval monastery in a graveyard. There are a couple of High Crosses in the graveyard - The Muiredach High Cross is a 18 ft tall; the West Cross is also known as theTall Cross is 21 ft tall; the North Cross has an interseting spiral ...

Newgrange was built around 3200 BC and is older than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. It also is aligned with the winter solstice so the sun lights up the tomb. There are decorated stones around the perimeter and inside the tomb.
The internal chamber is roughly 20 feet tall.

... It was all that needed to be present for me to gain so much knowledge about these people and their history and beliefs. My honest opinion? Both these groups that are Protestant and Catholic are both crazy. In the end, it doesn't matter which Religious sect you are (which is more just a front for their greed and power)) or part of the nation you come from - you are still both just human and are living for God and all this conflict is not because of ...

... one side was Catholic and the other side was protestant - amazing to think that there was an uncrossable line down the middle. We then headed out to the Titantic quarter - and my lesson was the day was that the Titanic was built in Belfast which I did not know. Arriving at the airport, there was a bit of banter with another taxi driver - Belfast is a small city, and folks know each other - our taxi driver said hello to quite a few as we were driving around, including ...

... be made in producing the various bits and pieces these girls had - and there were no boys that we saw. The flight to Belfast was full, and I dropped a coat on a lady trying to get my bag into the overhead locker - the joys of flying! It was a quiet flight though, and short. I am still very tired. Get to the Belfast City airport - the second airport in Belfast and a lot like Australian regional airports, although they did have a luggage carousel ...

... manner.

We called our B&B's owner to ask for further instructions. She told us how to get to her place from Drogheda. Despite the instructions, we still got lost. We finally managed to find Bettystown. After asking several drunk Irishmen about the location of the B&B, and getting very slurred instructions, we headed off in the direction they indicated. It still took us about 20 more minutes to find it. But, we finally did. The name of the place ...