Blogs from Trim, County Meath, Ireland, Europe

The second part of our journey in Ireland took us along the northwestern and northern coasts of the island. We started in Galway. There we saw a rock proclaiming Seattle the sister city of Galway along with a nearby monument stating that Christopher Columbus visited Galway in 1477 researching whether there was land on the other side of the Atlantic. Lastly we visited St Patrick’s Cathedral. It is the newest stone cathedral in Europe, built in the 1960’s and made of limestone. It has beautiful stained glass and mosaics including one where Jesus is serving tea to Joseph while Mary knits. It is a lovely church and since it is very modern it is easy to understand with no need to imagine what it would have looked like. That afternoon we boarded the ferry and sailed ... read more

3 days two nights driving from dublin through country roads to Belfast then through County Down and back through some hilly wonderfully beautiful fields... read more

Our original plan was to drive into Dublin, see the sites and then drop Jessie at the bus station to head back to Galway. We decided to skip Dublin since we had been told it is near impossible to drive in Dublin due to the traffic. Instead, we drove Jessie back to Galway. It was only a 2 1/2 hour trip from Trim to Galway, and we needed to do some more shopping. We thought we would be able to find gifts everywhere we went, so we did not buy everything in Galway and haul it around the country for two weeks. Unfortunately, we were wrong. So this gave us a chance to pick up all the gifts we needed to get, spend a little more time with Jessie and still get back to Trim at ... read more

Today was another travel day. We left Ballycastle to head back into the Republic. We passed through Armagh, the religious center of Ireland. St. Patrick established the first Christian church in Ireland in Armagh in 455 AD. There are two St. Patrick's Cathedrals on opposing hills in Armagh, one catholic and the other protestant. We stopped for lunch in Armagh, but did not tour the cathedrals. Our final destination was Trim in County Meath, Ireland's Heritage Capital. We booked a B&B across from Trim Castle which was used in filming parts of the movie Braveheart. There are numerous sites in Meath dating back to 4000 BC, as well as castles, abbeys and historical sites. The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript containing the four Gospels of the New Testament in Latin, was transcribed by Celtic monks ... read more