Day 9 - June 9th

Today (Sunday) started off with a lovely Mass said by Father John Murray at St. Patrick's Church in Downpatrick. We were welcomed by the congregation and even prayed for during the Prayers of the Faithful during Mass. A lady also came up to Tony and me outside the church to tell us that she was from Santa Cruz. Another lady was asking about Monk, the TV series based in San Francisco.

Although we were planning to visit the Giant's Causeway, the lovely weather (downpour) dictated that we would instead spend the rest of the day in Belfast. On the way, we stopped at Inch Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded by Anglo-Norman John de Courcy in the 12th century. Earlier in the trip, we had visited Dundrum Castle which had been built by John de Courcy. Rather than to defend a village, Inch Abbey was commissioned by de Courcy as an act of penance for destroying a different monastery, Erenagh Abbey, in 1177. Funnily enough, it was at Inch Abbey that the legend of St. Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland was written. However, Dr. Campbell said that snakes hadn't been in Ireland since the last ice age.

Once in Belfast, we stopped at St. George's Market. I picked up a match program for the 1976 European Cup Final which I thought was pretty cool, and then we headed off on a short tour around Belfast. We drove along the Falls Road, looking out for murals along the way. We also came across extremely tall walls that fenced in neighborhoods to prevent outsiders from throwing things into the neighborhood. We also came across signs pointing towards the Shankhill Road but didn't really spend much time driving through that neighborhood. We also went into a few pubs around Belfast, namely the Crown Bar. Though there was a trad session in one of the pubs we visited, I have yet to find a session with a banjo. Belfast was an interesting experience, and it was almost like a different world with the massive walls that we ran into in different areas.