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Yesterday we drove to Northern Ireland and visited an open air museum about emigration to America from Ireland. There was about forty buildings showing the houses,schools and shops of the time with some places having great volunteers dressed up in period costume and telling about life back in the day.

The museum started off by talking about the potato famine and why people immigrated to America. These were the houses they would have lived in in Ireland. The first house was quite small and would be for a poorer family.

A house with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls.

A wealthier family’s home.

This was the inside of a Catholic Church with the confessional in the corner.

Here was an one room schoolhouse with sixty students. The children would bring a cold, baked potato for lunch as well as two pieces of dried sod for the fireplaces at either end of the school. The kids would have slate and a board or ink pens.

To use the bathroom you had to walk outside the school into the attached room and do your business. We never figured out how they emptied the outhouse.

This was inside the printing shop.

This was a shopping street with many ‘stores’ open to walk through.

Then we boarded the ship to America to see what life was like there.

We decided we would not like to spend weeks in these bunks.

Home sweet home in the new world.

This is the house where we are staying. I love all the stone and brick everywhere.

It is very quiet and picturesque. This is the view all around.

Today we started our real adventures. The kids and I slept until 10 this morning (though I was up in the night for a bit) after going to bed around 7:30-8. We had breakfast and then went on the road.

Our first stop was magic hill. It’s a small hill where you stop at the bottom, put your car in neutral and the hill pulls you up the hill. It’s the weirdest thing and your mind has trouble believing it to be true. (It’s an optical illusion).

Then we went off to see the long women’s grave. It’s an interesting tale about a tall woman from Spain who died at the top of the mountain when she discovered she had left home for a man who actually owned a little bit of land instead of the great riches she had thought. We hiked up to the top of the mountain and had a picnic.

It was quite windy at the top so this pair decided to try fly by flapping their wings.

This is looking out at Northern Ireland.

After our good hike and passing many pastures of sheep, we visited a really old castle. We had a blast climbing around, in and on the castle built in the thirteenth century. Some of the walls had walkways inside of them with small slits for archers to defend the castle.

Our last stop of the day was a church with a tower next to it. When pillagers when come, they protected the church’s treasures by putting them in the tower and pulling up the ladder.