Still more Irish Loving...

Hello Friends!!

I am still in good ol' Ireland. We are staying in Sligo for our last night tonight. We toured around "yeats country" today and saw all the places associated with his poetry. It was a misty gray day but still really beautiful. We saw the Island of Innisfree "I will arise and go to Innisfree...", gosh...I am drawing a blank on all the places and names...but it was a lot of outdoor, lakes and such. We also toured an estate.

We had a guide Stella, from the Yeats Society. She read us poems and shared with us all the stories of the places. It was an all day trip so I am pretty exhausted which could be why I am not really having a good recall of what we did.

The first place we stopped was one of my favorites. I don't think it had anything to do with Yeats. It was a holywell that catholics worshipped at in the time when they were being persecuted by the protestant english. They worshipped their in secret. Now it has an altar and several statues of saints and mary. It was very peaceful though and holy. There were signs nailed to trees that said 'silence' and another vistor to the place was just sitting and praying.

When you walked up some stairs there was a tree covered with little trinkets, hair ties, and wrinnkled photographs. It is called the rag tree. It was beautiful, like an odd assorment of ornaments on a christmas tree...but they all meant something to someone. A memory frozen there...It was a neat experience.

We also visited Yeats grave with the famous epitath

Cast a Cold Eye
on Life on Death
Horseman, pass by!

There was a little craftshop right next to the church and I bought a grandpas hat. It is pretty sweet. I am pretending like I can pull it off.

We went and got some italian tonight for dinner and I think after this I am going to go listen to the new radiohead album (ahhh!!!) hopefully, a guy on this trip--alex downloaded it online so I am hoping to listen to it later.

We are heading to Belfast tomorrow, another long day of touring Northern Ireland and than we are meeting our host familes! I am so excited. We are hanging out with them for the weekend, so that should be a lot of fun. It will be nice to just SIT and be chill with a family.

Then we are done in Ireland after this weekend:( I have really liked it here so far...but the end of this month I am going to France and Italy so I have that to look forward to!

I guess that is all for now, I will update again this weekend I am sure.

Cheers!

Anne