Trip to Ireland, Scotland and Britain: Dublin, Edinburgh, York

Well, my plan to post while we were on our trip to the British Isles did not work out as I had planned.  A series of illnesses plagued us while we were traveling, which made doing anything difficult. And then when we returned, I had to have surgery and Tony had to have treatment for a condition diagnosed before we left.  In spite of our problems, however, we did see a great deal on the days we were feeling better.

We spent two days in Dublin and one in County Laois, visiting my cousin Canice and his wife, Maura.  While we were enjoying tea, two of Canice's sisters dropped by and we got to meet them.  What a wonderful treat. Here we are  in Canice and Maura's sitting room.

We had to scrap our plans to visit Newgrange, a prehistoric burial site north of Dublin, because Tony wasn't feeling well, but we did see the grave of Strongbow in Christ Church in Dublin and we attended an evening of music and storytelling at the oldest pub in Dublin, the Brazenhead.

Our next stop was Edinburgh where it was cold and windy.  We stayed on the Royal Mile and managed to visit Holyrood House as well as Edinburgh Castle.  We also visited Mary King's Close.  A close is a very narrow (hence the name) medieval street.  This street was uncovered during the building of more recent structures and it was dismal and depressing to see how people lived in the Middle Ages.  Below is the ruin of a monastery attached to Holyrood House.  Throughout England and Scotland we encountered many such ruins, the structures having been destroyed by Henry VIII. Each was hauntingly beautiful.

Of course, in Scotland, we encountered many men in kilts as well as bagpipers playing on street corners.  After a while, the bagpipe music got old. Edinburgh was quite interesting and there was much more we could have seen with more time and better health, but we enjoyed what we did see.

After four days in Scotland, we took the train to York in Northern England.  What a magnificent city.  We saw so many wonderful things and stayed in a lovely five star hotel, the Grand Hotel and Spa.  One of the biggest tourist attractions was The Shambles, a preserved medieval street where the butchers used to carve up animals and sell the meat.  It must have smelled awful, but today is it quite lovely.

As you can see, the houses hang out over the street and we were told that if you went to the top of some buildings and reached out the window, you could shake hands with someone reaching out of their building across the street. In York we also learned a lot about Vikings, spent some time relaxing in a beautiful park, and saw another ruined monastery, shown in the picture below.

We also saw Yorkminster, and attended evensong one afternoon, and strolled the ancient city walls, first built by the Romans.  We rented a car before leaving York and then headed to The Cotsolds.  I will have more to say on that in my next post.