Monday in Ireland

On Monday morning, we drove into Limerick City and met with the genealogist for Limerick Genealogy to see if there was something they could do to help us work on the White line and the Canter line. It seems they are set up to work more on a county basis and the White research will probably take a multi-county effort. She did say that she could help out on the Canter line and so I will probably write up a description and see what they can do on the Canter line.

In the afternoon, we when to the Bunratty Castle and folk park. It consists of a Castle built in the 1400s and a bunch of old historical shops, houses and farms similar to the Pioneer Heritage Park exhibits, except for Ireland.

Here is a picture of the restored Castle. It is not as glamorous as it originally was as the wall coverings, etc. no longer exist. Thus, you have to use your imagination of Disney pictures.

The Castle also served as a defensive fort. We climbed up one of the towers and took a look around.

Above is a view of the landscape from the tower. I think this is the Bunratty river emptying into the larger Shannon river. Below is a look down from the tower. Notice how small the people are. We could imagine Daniel, Dallin and perhaps Ian and Luke in their armour defending the Castle.

Above is a picture of the Castle's main hall. We could imagine seeing Haley, Emmy and Kemry at the Prince's ball. We couldn't use flash photography so the picture isn't the best.

The ceiling in one of the rooms was amazing and below are a couple of samples of the beautiful cravings in the Castle.

We only took a couple of pictures of the folk park. There was one very unique feature in the park; these old historical trailers. We were blown away to see that these were owned by the Parrys. Are Uncle Jeff's ancestors Irish?

Charlie was facinated with the thatched roofs and took this picture of a worker thatching this roof.

There were also some pretty gardens in the folk park. Here is a picture of some flowers that we liked.

Sunday, July 26

How did we find it? The name of the road was spelled wrong. There were several roads with what must have been the right spelling in the middle of Limerick along way from home. Amazingly, we found the local branch for Sunday meetings while driving on the wrong side of the road.

On Sunday, we attended the small Limerick branch for Church. It was almost a miracle that we found it. The address was just Dooradoyle Road with no street address and there were several roads with that name --- one main road with several branches off of it, all with the same name. We put the road into Uncle Brent's GPS and took off only to end up at a bunch of soccor or rugby fields. I remembered that there was also a shopping center on Dooradoyle Road, so we told the GPS to go to the shopping center. We had to go all around the shopping center to exit and just as we were about to leave, we saw the church just across the street. We enjoyed services. There were almost as many visitors as members. There was a couple from Arizona, one from Iowa (the husband worked in Iraq and was just on holiday) and there were a few from Nigeria besides us. I asked someone about why it seemed like everyone was named Kelly and he told me that his mother had 15 children when she joined the church back in the mid-70s.

No, Dallin and Daniel. This is not a picture of the church building. It is a picture of an old castle/fortress. You would have enjoyed seeing this.

King John's castle was first a Viking stronghold in 922. A castle was built there under orders from King John about 1200. The Castle endured multiple sieges culminating in the siege of 1691 when the English Williamite forces lay siege on the Irish and French held up in the Castle. This led to the famous Treaty of Limerick.

In the 19th to the early 20th century, it was the home of British forces with Irish town across the river. Turrets were only placed on the Irishtown side.

To the right is a picture of Irishtown across the bridge from the castle.

The castle also provided a great view of the city and the surrounding landscape.

The last picture on the right shows the river towards the city. Notice that they have constructed a rapids where kayakers were out having fun in it.

You can read more about the castle's history at the following link if you are interested.

http://www.teachnet.ie/mmorrin/castle/history.htm

2009 Adventure --- Day 1

At the risk of disappointing Natascha and ruining our standing as the most out of date blog on her list, we are going to blog about our trip to Ireland and Sweden to see Caleb and Johanna.

We arrived safely in Shannon, Ireland, on July 25, having survived a 6 1/2 hour layover at JFK. Our flight was delayed 1 1/2 because they said that they couldn't find a gate to load the plane. They said that they had the plane and crew there and there was just a traffic jam for gates. However, this didn't seem to add up as there was no plane at our gate. Nevertheless, we boarded the almost completely full Delta flight and tried to get some sleep, which was hard since there were game and movie consoles on the back of every seat. Grandma exercised her supper natural powers to withstand the urge to continue playing games and was soon sawing logs.

The above map shows our starting point, JFK airport and Shannon airport in Ireland. (The map also shows our later flight to Sweden with a connection in France. We arrived about 11:00 am in Ireland, picked up our baggage and rented a car.

For the next three days, we stayed at a bed and breakfast between the airport and Limerick City called Headley Court. We had stayed here once before and it is very nice with great breakfasts.

After a short nap, we drove into Limerick City, looked for a couple of shops that were mentioned in our guide book and had lunch.