Glascow & Belfast
The excursion for the day was to see the Lochs (basically a
lake that can be either salt or fresh water) of Scotland. The scenery was very beautiful.
This is a Castle Invererary across Loch Fyne. The 13th Duke of Argyle is in
residence there. He is also the keeper
of the keys to the Queen’s Scottish residence.
I guess he is an important dude!
This road was built in the 1740’s and of course, they are
still working on it! Construction is
universal really!
The little houses had beautiful flowers, everything in
bloom!
We saw a church with graveyard in Loss. The oldest tombstone that I could read had a
death in 1799. There were many older
ones that were illegible.
The Crown Saloon.
This saloon used to be called the Railway Inn. It was not terribly prosperous until the
(Catholic) owner hired the Italian workers who were in town to build the
Cathedral to renovate his pub. [sort of an early HGTV thing]. Once renovated his (Protestant) wife said
that such a magnificent pub needed a great name. She suggested “The Crown”. This did not sit well with this
Irish-Catholic man but he decided to make his wife happy and agreed to the
name. He even had the name of the pub and
a replica of the Queen’s crown placed in tile at the entry to the pub. Little did his wife know that this was so
that every time one of his fellow countrymen entered the pub they could wipe
their feet on the crown. We had a pint
in the pub before heading on our way.
This Big Fish was installed near the river to commemorate the return of the salmon to the river. They built a new dam/weir to help clean up the river. It worked and the river is cleaner and the salmon have returned after a 200 year absence.
The Protestants held all the positions of authority by 1630
and they decided that no pubs could be on the main roads in the town. They were teetotalers of course. As a result, every alley way in Belfast has
at least one or two pubs. This was a
super cool alleyway we went down. The
oldest pub in Belfast, White Pub, was opened in 1630.
The Titanic was built in Belfast. They have kind of leaned-into this fact in
recent years (I suspect since the popularity of the movie). There is a “Titanic Experience” that you can
tour. We decided not to do that, but we
did see the Titanic Memorial. The names
of all those lost at sea are found at the memorial.
Stay tuned. Wales and
Ireland are coming up next!
Sheri & Carsten
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