McGee's Pub

Once Upon A Time in a place called North Carolina, there lived a husband, a wife and son, a dog, a cat, and two sets of grandparents.  The husband was working on a big computer software installation at his company's Ireland facility in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland.  

An Irish Table for St. Patrick's Day

I'm into my fourth year of blogging, and this is the year I finally put a St. Paddy's Day tablescape together and actually got it photographed.  Yippee!  Mr. Forest Manor did the photography for me (Thanks Honey) -- I really appreciate the good pictures he takes.

The Land of Shamrocks, Part 2

St. Paddy's Day hasn't arrived yet, but everyone is still celebrating.  There's a whole lot of celebrating going on over at Cuisine Kathleen's place.  She's hosting the Fourth Annual St. Patrick's Day Blog Party Crawl (try saying that three times really fast) :)

I thought I would leave you with a few last images of Ireland from the trip we took in 1999 (you can see Part 1 of our trip HERE).  But I also wanted to share some thoughts about my experience.  I so appreciate all the nice comments people left on the first part of my post.  It's amazing how many out there have Irish roots and have traveled to Ireland.  A few of you mentioned "The Troubles" in your comments.  When we think of Ireland, we think of the beauty -- the unbelievable green land, the magical light, the flowers, cottages, and the hospitable people.  And unfortunately, most of us think of "The Troubles."

Ireland, The Land of Shamrocks

This week it seems that in America and across the big pond; in the old country and the new, almost everyone is celebrating being Irish.  Some folks can claim a true Irish heritage, and others are Irish only in spirit.  But either way, we all seem to enjoy the experience of St. Patrick's Day.

In April of 1999, I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to England and Ireland with my husband, who was spending a lot of time there on a big computer project for work.  The company he works for has a facility in England and one in Northern Ireland.  Now I realize that Northern Ireland is not really Ireland proper, as it's actually part of Great Britain.  But, if you have a rental car, the Republic of Ireland is within driving distance and one can spend the day there, which is what we did.

It really was a great adventure, this trip.  I'm so thankful I had the chance to go.  It was mostly a working trip for my husband, but at least he was able to be free on the weekends, and that's when we did most of our sightseeing.

Our trip was scheduled for ten days, and two of those were spent in the air between London and Raleigh, North Carolina.  One day was spent traveling to Belfast, Northern Ireland.  So that left us with five days in England and two full days in Ireland.

I don't have a lot of pictures of Ireland, but I'll share what I have.  We didn't own a digital camera in 1999, and these pictures were made on my beloved Canon Sureshot, 35mm, automatic focus.  My parents gave it to Mr. Forest Manor and I for our first Christmas.  It was so easy to use, and it actually took pretty good pictures.

I spent about two hours today scanning all these pictures into Picasa and editing some of them.  To be almost 13 years old, they've held up pretty well.