Took a black cab tour with Peter this morning. We went to Shankill Rd first, which is a Protestant/loyalist area and saw all the UFF murals, then to the peace wall which separates Shankill Rd from Falls Rd (the Catholic area). The wall is 5.8 miles long and extends up into the mountains (there are 47 more walls like this in the city). There are seven gates in the wall and they are only open between 6 am and 6 pm (no exceptions, not even police or ambulance). The ...

Crossed the border into Northern Ireland this morning and straight away you notice the flag flying. All the villages that support the monarchy have flags everywhere and red, white and blue lamp posts and even kerbing is painted in the three colours. Driving into Londonderry/Derry we followed a diversion and the bus ended up stuck at the bottom of a very steep hill. It caused traffic chaos and we had to get the police to clear the traffic and then reverse all the ...

Spent some time in Galway this morning but not much open in the city on a Sunday morning. We then drove through the Connemara district with beautiful rugged mountains and some lakes. We continued up the west coast to Donegal and our final destination of Letterkenny. This afternoon we experienced our first bout of 'real Irish weather' as it rained for most of the afternoon and evening. It made sight-seeing a little difficult.

Drove through Limerick this morning and then out to the west coast to the Cliffs of Moher overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It was quite windy on top of the cliffs but still a beautiful sunny day. The views of the coastline, the Aran Islands and across the bay were amazing. We then drove down the 'corkscrew' (a very windy road) then all the way around the bay to Galway.

Foggy morning for our drive around the Ring of Kerry but cleared just in time for us to get the good views and stayed sunny for the rest of the day until late evening. We saw great views of Dingle Bay, Waterville and Castle Cove along the coastline, then headed back into Killarney National Park, over the mountains and around the lakes- beautiful! Free time this afternoon after having lunch in Killarney, and then we had dinner in a Chinese restaurant - just for a...