Saturday, August 2

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We have arrived in the storied land of the mighty O'Rourke clan! And since you're reading this, you can probably deduce that we do indeed have internet access....high speed wireless even!!

After a few hours of driving from Belfast where we picked up our rental car, we pulled into our self-catering cottage -- which sits on a real working dairy farm. This will be our home for the next seven days, and we couldn't be happier!

We stopped along the way in the resort town of Enniskillen (right on the Northern Ireland / Republic of Ireland border. We had lunch and stopped by the famous Marble Arch Caves, which is on the exclusive list of European GeoParks. Very cool.

One thing we can say for sure is that navigating these roads is very tricky. Once you get used to driving on the "wrong" side,of these insanely narrow roads, you still have to contend with the lack of adequate signage. Instead of labeling the name or number of the roadways, most of these Irish country roads simply tell you which towns are in which direction. To add to the fun, all the signs here are in Gaelic and English -- which is actually pretty cool other than the confustion factor.

We had dinner in the little town of Mohill, a charming and genuine rural Irish town. I had the "Irish Fry" breakfast, which closely resembled the "Ulster Fry" we had in Northern Ireland. However, if I had ordered it by saying "Ulster Fry," I may have received a hurling stick whack to the back of the head. The main difference between the two versions was the inclusion of the black & white pudding. For those of you who aren't familiar with this Irish favorite, it isn't what it sounds like. Black pudding is also known as blood pudding (yep...real blood), and white pudding's main ingredient is pork fat. Mmmmmm.....fat and blood. You can see a photo Kelly snapped of me supposedly about to eat the black pudding, but believe me...it's 100% staged.

We stopped on the way back to the cottage to the village football grounds where a big Gaelic Football tournament was taking place. I think I can safely say everyone within a 15-mile radius was sitting in the stands. This is a Gaelic Football-crazy area. The little village of Cloone consists of only two pubs and two churches, but has a Gaelic Football pitch (field) that would put many of our smaller college football stadiums to shame! The admission was 10 Euro ($15) per person, so we decided to just snap a few shots from across the moat outside the stadium. We listened to a local Gaelic radio station on the way back to the cottage...fascinating stuff. Sounds a little like Russian, but it's a unique language all to itself. We understood very little, other than when the man said, "asdo ias asi oaisp ois Gary Glitter doa soid aposdip aois." Can anybody tell us if Gary Glitter has been in the news recently?

Well, that'll be all for now. Lots more we'd like to tell you, but we'll save it for later. It's so exciting to be walking on the very soil the O'Rourke chieftans did back when they owned this entire area of Ireland.

Thanks for all your great comments and messages! We love to hear from you.

-- Ryan & Kelly

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Photos

Mohill, County Leitrim
Notice the Irish (Gaelic) included on the sign.

Black Pudding
Mmmmmmmmm........blood......

O'Rourke Soil
This is on the farm at our cottage.