Last week I was blessed to be on the Emerald Isle, vacationing with my husband and our good friends. It was the trip of a lifetime, and I’m still trying to process everything we saw and did.

[image error]All the shades of green!

Ireland is amazing. It is as green as the pictures show and everyone says. There’s a laid-back peace to the country too. (This does not include Northern Ireland, where the countryside is magical, but the cities are tense. I’ll talk more about that in a later post.)

There is a magic to this place. It’s in the stones of the streets that have been there for a thousand years. It’s in the walls of the pubs, cathedrals, and alleyways. With the exception of the Native ruins in the southwest, we don’t have that kind of solid, tangible history in this country. We don’t live and work among buildings that are hundreds of years old. We don’t worship in places that were built without the aid of gas-powered machines. (At least not here in the west.) It takes your breath away to think of the history that these places have seen.

We walked up stairways of carved stone that were worn smooth by the passage of time and untold numbers of feet. We strolled through castle grounds filled with trees older than our own country. We walked down lanes sheltered by trees tended by fairies, and clambered over rocks once thrown by giants. 

I’ll leave you with a few pictures and the promise of more to come. 
Feicfidh mé go luath thú.

[image error][image error]Cliffs at Carrick-a-Rede Bridge[image error]Blarney Castle[image error]Book of Kells[image error]Brazen Head Pub
Oldest Pub in Ireland[image error]Christchurch
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Christchurch[image error]Dark Hedges[image error]Dolmen at
Blarney Castle[image error]Dublin[image error]Dunluce Castle[image error]Fairy Forest
at Blarney Castle[image error]Entrance to the Hidden Lands?[image error]Giant’s Causeway[image error]Long Library at Trinity College