Ireland, Day Twelve: Donegal to Derry

We ate breakfast in a little tea room in Donegal Town that reminded me somehow of Harry Potter.

  
And then we set out for Glenveagh National Park, about an hour away. This was private land until the 1960s, when the owner of the McIlhenny Hot Sauce fortune (?) gave it to the Irish government.

It rained on us four or five separate times in the hours we were here. As elsewhere, we could always see it coming from a distance, which can be both a positive and a negative.

We stood and watched as a rainbow appeared from nothing and crossed the mountain.

There is a castle, built by someone rich who used to live here, and you can take a bus to it from the visitors center if you like. We walked, though. It took about an hour. Everywhere we went, the landscape was different than the day before. Glenveagh seemed more barren and wild than elsewhere.

Benjamin was losing enthusiasm about being rained on all the time.

We walked around the gardens & grounds of the castle but did not go inside.

I wanted to see what was in this thing but that man stood there smoking for too long and eventually I gave up.

We took an additional trail behind the castle up to the viewpoint. Looking at the map, you could go around the long way or take the "shorter steep route." Short and steep wins the race!

There were these creepy stairs to nowhere across the valley.

It started to rain again on the way down. Ben was demonstrating here how we could crouch down under that ledge like in the Lord of the Rings when they hid from the Black Riders. Mostly, though, we huddled together under the trees for ten minutes, which turns out to be a very effective to stay relatively dry. The great thing about Ireland is that 90% of the time, the rain seems to stop within ten minutes.

Following lunch in the visitors center, we drove on to Derry, another hour or so.

Derry is in Northern Ireland, which belongs to the UK. There is no noticeable border; the only indication that you're in a different country is that the speed limit signs are suddenly in miles per hour, as opposed to kilometers. However, Derry felt quite different from anyplace we had been so far. It was a center of The Troubles in the 80s and 90s, and you can definitely still feel it today. They are still arguing over whether to call the city Londonderry or Derry - we saw highway signs with the "London" part blacked out.

We stayed within the city walls at the Bishops Gate Hotel, which was extremely nice. When we got there we put on our Aran Islands sweaters for a picture.

Then we went out to see the town. You can walk all around on top of Derry's standing city walls, dating from medieval times.

There were very few people around - mostly teenagers in school uniforms - and although it was around 5:00pm on a Wednesday, all the shops were starting to close. This was particularly strange after having spent time for the past two weeks in places with pubs open late and people wandering around at all hours.

  

This church was built in the 1500s but looks brand new compared with a lot of things we'd seen recently.

Some of the old guard towers on the walls still survive. These were built relatively recently, because the guards complained about having to stand out in the rain all the time. I feel you, dudes.

In general the city felt very quiet, but not necessarily in an ominous way. Right here in this neighborhood, people were killing each other less than thirty years ago.

We went into a hippie sort of store that sold used books, records, jewelry, all sorts of stuff. It's hard not to buy foreign versions of books when I see them! I want it. But books are not a super practical thing to buy when you have to fly with them back across the ocean.

By 6:00, the city was virtually deserted. So strange.

We walked to the river and saw yet another amazing rainbow.

The Peace Bridge connects the Irish Catholic old city with the British Protestant neighborhoods on the opposing bank.

There aren't many restaurants inside the walls, either. We found one a few minutes' walk away that was pretty good. Then, naturally, it was raining when we left. We sat on a bench under the awning and waited the few minutes for it to stop.

Then we went back to our lovely hotel room and watched season 9 of Peep Show on Netflix, which is not available in the US.