It's 3:30pm and we've just touched down. Taxiing in to our gate now!
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How Do You Get Comfortable on a Flight?
At this point we've been in the air about 6 hours. We are just over the Gulf of St. Laurence. Another hour and a half to go! Yeah!!!
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Waiting to Board
We are at the airport, have checked through security and are waiting to board. Or is that waiting AND bored?
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The Dinner Continues!
I had to send one more. Miranda was just having too much fun dancing! We were right in front of the stage. Our girls spent the evening talking with the performs.
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Farewell Dinner
Right now we are out at a farewell dinner with traditional Celtic music and step dancing. (It is just after 10pm our time.) We were doing some clapping in one of the songs and they were looking for people to bring up on stage. Hannah was one of the people they chosen. Here she is talking with the piper.
It has been a great tour with both musical and memorable sightseeing highlights! Tomorrow we be heading to the airport to come home and see all of you!
Time to get back to singing and clapping along!
Rob Cairns 519.670.0525 (cell) Sent from my iPhone
St. Patrick's Performance continued
As soon as we started singing people came and sat in the seats along the centre isle. More stopped off to the sides and stood to listen. There were at least a couple of hundred people watching the choir perform. It was the best performance by the choir of the tour! It was true wonderful to listen to 9 voices fill the cathedral with sound.
Rob Cairns 519.670.0525 (cell) Sent from my iPhone
St. Patrick's Cathedral Performance
This afternoon were did our final concert at St. Patrick's Cathedral in downtown Dublin. It is the largest cathedral in Ireland. The kids were nervous because the place was filled with tourists. We set ourselves up and sang for about 25 minutes, performing 7 pieces. This picture is just before we began. You can see the height of the interior from this picture.
Rob Cairns 519.670.0525 (cell) Sent from my iPhone
Tour of Dublin
After we saw the Book of Kells we went on a driving tour of Dublin. John took us all around the city. We ended up in Phoenix Park. It is the largest park in Europe. It is twice as big as Central Park in New York. One particular spot we visited was the site where Pope John Paul II preached a mass at the beginning of his time as pope. There were over a million people in the park in front of the cross in this picture.
Rob Cairns 519.670.0525 (cell) Sent from my iPhone
Book of Kells and Tour of Dublin
This morning we got up and had a full Irish breakfast at the hotel. It was huge and it was wonderful! After that we set out to go to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. This is a hand written manuscript of the first four books of the New Testament in Celtic. The illuminations were beautiful. Sorry I can't send you a photo, they were not allowed. After we went up into the library at Trinity. It was like visiting the library in Harry Potter. 220,000 hand bound books lining shelf after shelf!
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Dinner in Dublin
We arrived at our hotel in Dublin, settled in and went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The girls all decided to get dressed up for dinner. Tomorrow is our last full day. We will be seeing the Book of Kells and performing at St. Patrick's Cathedral at lunchtime. Big day ahead of us!
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The Rock of Cashel countryside
In this panorama you can see the countryside around the ruin. Up in the top left is the cathedral.
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The Rock of Cashel
The last post I said we visited Cashel Rock. I really should have said the Rock of Cashel. The castle/cathedral is a ruin which they are doing some work on. It sits up on a hill overlooking the countryside. It is a very early site done in Romanesque style which predates gothic style. It was originally where the Irish kings resided, but was taken over by the church. We visited the choir residence and the chapel. The kids sang in the chapel for the people on the tour with us, then we saw the rest of the structure.
Kilkenny Castle
We are on our way to Dublin. Have already stopped and toured Cashel Rock, which was the medieval seat of the Irish kings. We are now heading in to Kilkenny Castle.
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St. Coleman's Cathedral in Cobh (Cove)
After the Blarney Woollen Mill we went to do our concert at the Maryborough Nursing Home. It took a while to actually find them, but when we got there the kids did a nice job on the solo pieces we did at our cabaret night. For this concert Graham also taught the kids "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". We did this as an audience sing-a-long. It went over well and the kids have been singing every since. A lot ever since! Graham seems to have created a singing Tipperary monster. So now I'm thinking of letting them know that it is also a long we back from Tipperary!
Our driver/guide, John suggested that we make an additional stop on our way back to dinner. He drove us in to Cobh, pronounced Cove. Cobh was the final stop to pick up people for the Titanic before heading across the Atlantic. Many of the Irish immigrants who were on the ship joined the voyage at this port. John dropped us at the front door of the cathedral. This is where most of those immigrants celebrated mass in Ireland for the last time before heading out to sea. We walked in and for many of the kids, they saw what the inside of a large cathedral looks like for the first time. There was one other group in the cathedral as well. University aged kids from all over Europe on an English as a second language tour. Their guide was telling them how beautiful the acoustics of the building were. She asked if anyone in their group wanted to sing. No one did. At that point one of our chaperones, Karen, jumped in and said that the other group there was a choir and would they like to hear them. The kids lined up and we sang "O Vos Omnes". Their faces lit up as they heard their voices reverberate throughout the cathedral! We also sang our "Agnus Dei" medieval chant. They were so excited after the performance it was hard to get them to head down to the harbour to see where the Titanic left from. They just wanted to keep singing. It was definitely the musical highlight of the tour so far.
Tomorrow we are off to Dublin so it's time to get some sleep.
Blarney Castle
After the shopping experience we headed for Blarney Castle. The grounds are beautiful. Before heading up to the castle the girls paused for a picture with the castle in the background. We made our way up to the castle and most of them made their way up the 170 steps to the top of the castle to "Kiss the Blarney Stone". It's mounted right up at the top of the castle keep behind them in the picture.
After that we went to a wool mill shop. Lots of authentic Irish woollen items as well as other Irish keepsakes. I'm pretty sure there are many souvenirs coming home from there. (More shopping, but at least this time I could look around too.)
Rob Cairns 519.670.0525 (cell) Sent from my iPhone
Waiting for the Shoppers
My Mom ways complains that when I go on tour with a group I'm never in the photos. Well, as I said in the previous post, I was waiting for the shoppers while drinking my coffee. The kids are always taking pictures of themselves with their phones, so why not! Here I am Mom, sitting on a street in Cork, Ireland! Waiting! and waiting! The coffee though is quite good.
Day 5 Begins
We have stated our day with a bit of shopping time at the market area in downtown Cork. We have broken off into our chaperone groups so that the girls can explore the various stores that are of interest to each group. Of course it is mostly about clothing, so as a result I am sitting on a bench outside a clothing store with a coffee as the girls frantically search for bargains inside. Ah, the life of a chaperone!
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Cliffs of Moher
When we arrived at the cliffs I walked out to the viewing area while everyone else went into the interpretation centre. The "mist" was so heavy at this point we could not see exact where the interpretation centre was. We just knew it was along the walkway somewhere. We had a nice lunch, saw the display and visited the gift shop, resigned to the fact that today was not the best day to see the 200 metre high cliffs.
Just as we were getting ready to head back to the bus the fog started let up. The wind was still very strong at the viewing area and we were all soaked when we got back to the bus, but we did see the cliffs! I managed to quickly get this shot before we went back.
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Fairy Circle 2
Here is a second picture of the Fairy Circle from the other side. You can see the path along the raised ring of ground that forms the circle more clearly in this picture. The light comes through the middle and lights up the centre of the circle.
Rob Cairns 519.670.0525 (cell) Sent from my iPhone
Fairy Circles
The day today started out with very light rain bordering on fog. I asked John, our driver/tour guide if this is what was called "Irish Mist". He said the term was in fact true. They will often have this type of rain rather than large storms like we have. .
We visited a Neolithic stone defensive circle. It is basically a circular wall of rocks about 12 feet high that encloses the living area for a family. This provided protection from the wolves that were common to this area. The "mist" was pretty heavy during our visit so I didn't pull out my phone to get a picture to send back. Sorry about that.
We visited another type of circle just after that. An earthen circle lined with trees. People here call these "fairy" circle. It did seem like a magical type of place that you could imagine fairies living around. The picture with this entry is of that circle.
Rob Cairns 519.670.0525 (cell) Sent from my iPhone