Hello dear friends! This might get a bit long, so here’s the tl;dr version: We really like our friends, living in Belfast, and traveling around Ireland. Check out these cool photos! Now for the full post: Ben here. Laurel has just finished final edits on her dissertation. Tomorrow she sends it to be printed and bound! She’s obviously not about to write a blog post, so I’ve been sitting here staring at the back of her head and wondering how I can possibly fill you all in on what we’ve been up to for the past six months. Two posts is the answer. Here’s part one! Fun tip: if you move to a popular vacation spot, prepare a guest room for your friends. Our guest room was the big red couch in our living room, supplemented, as needed, by an air mattress and sleeping bags. This couch is L-shaped, and plenty big to sleep two at once. It has generously provided its services to many friends who have made the journey to Belfast. It has welcomed with open cushions all who have come to take in Northern Ireland’s culture, cuisine, and history, or just to keep us company for a few days. Here's a brief catalogue of those visitors. Travel and Touring The Visitors of 2017 began with Laurel’s sister and her friend coming to visit on their Spring break from Goshen College. Chloe and Cassie were excited to make good on their Christmas gift from the two of us: a Game of Thrones bus tour. GoT films in many beautiful locations around Northern Ireland, so this is a chance to see the country and relive some of the moments from the show. Chloe and Cassie also had a lot of free time to explore Belfast. We got high tea, and took in some traditional music and traditional food (more on that in a second). The Causeway and Cuisine Overlapping by a day with Chloe and Cassie, our friends Rudy and Michelle visited us as part of a larger European adventure. In an effort to make their trip special, we introduced them to the traditional breakfast of the region: the Ulster Fry. Bacon, sausages, ham, black pudding, a fried egg, a pancake, a fried potato bread, soda bread, and sometimes toast, baked beans, tomato, or mushroom. It makes a memorable (read: stomach-churning) start to the day! With Rudy and Michelle we rented our first car of the year, a tiny Ford compact. We took our Little White Fiesta on the road, making a two-day trip to the North Coast, to see the Giant’s causeway. and a few other sites. The causeway is the must-see tourist attraction in Northern Ireland, a World Heritage Site and natural wonder. We’ve been there five times so far this yeear, soon to be six, and it’s great fun to have different weather and different crowds each time.On our evening in Bushmills,we had great fun trying to find a fancy meal together: we ended up rushing through some overpriced appetizers, and then finding a take-away shop for fish and chips to eat at our Bed and Breakfast! We all agreed that we nailed it. Donegal, Dublin, and Driving A bit later, Laurel’s parents came for a visit. They brought the rental car this time, which gave us a lot of chances to see places we hadn’t been. This particular rental car was slightly larger than our previous one, and it opened our eyes to just how narrow these roads are, and just how close those stone walls are to the road. Don handled it well, even if the rest of us faced some terror. With Don and Joan, we got to visit our landlords’ cottage in county Donegal, overlooking Lough Eske. It may be one of the most beautiful places in the world, lounging in the sitting room gazing out at the long, slow sunsets over the lake, surrounded by rugged hills, with the Atlantic in the distance.. We tramped through hills and bogs, cliffs and shorelines, and generally took in the glorious countryside (with a few visits to Donegal tweed shops along the way). Our trip ended with an overnight stay at a fancy hotel in Dublin, a radical change from the rustic cottage we had come from, and another chance to take in all Ireland has to offer. Corrymeela and Cycling We’ve also been able to play host to people who are mostly passing through: that’s what we did for Jesse and Joelle, recently graduated from Goshen College. They were going to meet up with other friends to travel in Europe, but stopped in Belfast along the way. Jesse took a few days to bike up the North Coast, while Joelle volunteered with Corrymeela, the Christian ecumenical peacebuilding community, also located on the coast. We also got a visit from Cyril and Maxime, a French and a Swiss student on break from their University. Laurel spent a summer with Cyril's family when she was in high school! It was fun to know that people coming to the area on bigger trips could make good use of us, and Belfast, as a part of their journeys. Belfast is the place to be! Pipes, Puffins, and Politics There has been a lot of political craziness in Northern Ireland this year. I think it’s been a refreshing change of pace for our US-based visitors! Ben’s mom came to visit just after the UK parliament elections in June, as we were getting used to the idea of a Northern Irish party providing the necessary seats to keep Teresa May and the Consevative party in power in London. Unremarkably, this didn’t affect her visit too much, beyond some shocked newspaper headlines. Anita’s first day here was a chance to see the UK Pipe Band Championships, being held in Belfast - at Stormont Estate, home of the currently defunct Northern Ireland Assembly (more political shenanigans). Our road trip with her took us to the west coast, to Connemara national park, Galway, and the cliffs of Moher. Both at the cliffs and at Howth, where we stopped before taking her to the airport, we got to see some adorable puffins, flying in their ungainly, slightly desperate way on the gusty wind. Castles and Cards In early July, we got the chance to travel in North Wales with Grace and Ben, our college friends who we are excited to live within a few hours of this fall (but that’s for the next post)! This region of Wales is famous, in part, for the series of castles built by the English as they conquered the area in the late 1200s. In my opinion, the most picturesque one is in Beaumaris, where my family and I lived when I was 6 years old. It was fantastic to see the town again, and remember the old sights and smells. We also enjoyed sitting in Welsh cafes, chatting and playing round after round of euchre. Ballet, Bonfires, and Bonnets Less than a week later, we got three overlapping visitors.All spring Laurel had been attending a ballet course, and their final performance, of a portion of Swan Lake, finally happened in July. Laurel’s mom was good enough to come and see that concert! It was a fabulous event. Soon after, Laurel’s MVS mate, Heather, arrived, we went to the Causeway, and showed her around the City. The following day, our college friend Justin arrived, in time for the most contentious two days of the year in Belfast: the 11th and 12th of July. There’s a good deal to explain here, but the short version is that the Loyalist Unionist Protestant portion of society celebrates the 12th as the victory of William of Orange (soon King William III) over recently-deposed King James II in 1690. On the 12th they hold parades, but on the night of the 11th they burn bonfires all over the region. And when I say bonfires, I mean things that have been under construction for days and weeks, some over 100 feet tall, with an outer cylindrical shell of warehouse pallets. We went to visit one of these bonfires, and it was nearly unbelievable that this happens. Around midnight, people throw a few Molotov cocktails into the structure, and the whole thing starts to catch. The flames grow taller and taller, and everyone starts to watch for which was the pile will collapse. It collapsed away from us, but toward an apartment building and the gas tank of the nearby hotels, both of which had fire trucks hosing them down to keep them cool. It was uncomfortably warm, even at our safe distance, so we backed away, and then headed home past a few other, smaller fires. The next day, about 10 hours later, the big fire was still burning when we walked by. Heather left town, but then we traveled with Justin, first to the Ulster American folk park in Omagh. This is where the bonnets come in - people in 19th century dress were eager to tell us about how they slept on the floor, and ate potatoes, and longed to travel to America. We also made our first visit to Derry, a fantastic and historic city in the North, on the border with the Republic of Ireland, known as the place where the Troubles began. Copenhagen, Cork, Cats, and Corben We've also done some travels of our own. This spring, Laurel went to Copenhagen to visit her cousin Britta, where they fooled the locals into thinking they were Danish. In July, we went south to Cork city, another fascinating place with a captivating history, for Laurel to have a working vacation. We stayed in two fantastic AirBnBs, one with two adorable cats, Murphy and Martha, who gave Laurel some much-needed fuzz therapy in her writing. The other was a treehouse on top of a hill overlooking the city - need I say more? A week later, we went to the wedding of Corben and Mara in Illinois, which was a joyous opportunity to reconnect with friends. Laurel was a bridesmaid, I got to play the piano before the service (which I haven’t gotten to do much this year), and we were happy to forget about dissertations and planning for the future for a few days. I also got to visit my sister’s farm, harvest some potatoes and shallots, and meet another very lovey cat, Gooseberry. Our attachment to the idea of getting a cat soon is growing… That long post was just a quick rundown of our visitors and vacations this year. We will have more visitors later this week, when Laurel is done writing, for some final adventures. Next week's post will be a bit of an update on our school and work, and future plans!
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