Wednesday May 27, 2009

First stop of the day was picking up Haddon at his house somewhere about 20 minutes away.  He lives in a cute, Irish house and as the Irish do, we were invited in for tea and biscuits.  The biscuits turned out to be mini pancakes, blueberry scones, cookies (biscuits), and tea or coffee.  I chose coffee since it is somewhat hard to get here at the house as what we get is tea, tea, tea!  After enjoying our coffee and scones, we headed off to Downpatrick to a cathedral where Saint Patrick is buried, or at least part of him is.  We saw his grave and the cathedral that hosts it.  This cathedral was smaller, but felt a lot older.  It smelled musty and had stone for the floor and an organ in the middle of the naive, which turns out to be a great location for acoustics.  A short walk from the cathedral is a museum of sorts.  We walked around a little bit and saw the old jail cells and Phil and Andrew played life-sized chess.  Then we drove through some country roads to the site of an ancient abbey.  We ate lunch, then walked through the abbey, which is now broken stone walls.  Many of the adventurous climbed to the top of the walls, I took pictures.  That is probably the coolest sight I have seen yet because it is very old and not taken over by some park service or company.  We drove up to it and walked around at our own leisure.  It is amazing that it is still standing.  After enjoying the climbing, we went to Saint Patrick's Memorial Church in Saul.  An uphill walk led us to an overgrown grave-sight and a small chapel that is still in use.  We spent some time sketching and reflecting then drove home. It was a busy day, but one of the best so far.