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Day 21 of 21 "Last full day in Ireland"

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 There is still so much to see and do in Dublin that we had to narrow it down to just 3 places:  St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin Castle, and the Winding Stair Bookshop and Cafe.  We ended up walking six miles to make a total of 101 miles this entire trip. Again, the weather was free of rain, cloudy and slightly windy, pleasant for the amount of walking we did. We left Wren Urban Nest at 12:30pm and returned at 5:00pm. The trip feels complete. We'll rest up before dinner tonight, again at the Wren, fully pack for the plane ride home tomorrow, and hope to get a good night's sleep tonight. Tomorrow will be a very long day. Here are a few pictures of today's adventures. I will probably post more after we get home, so for now, I'll call this the short version. A big THANK YOU! to everyone who traveled along with us. It helped me stay accountable to the blog and keep track of all that we did these past 3 weeks. It was also fun to stay in touch with texts. Technology is so
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Day 20 of 21 "Train from Belfast to Dublin"

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 Today is our last train ride in Ireland traveling from Belfast to Dublin. As we were walking to the train station I remembered that Van Morrison will be playing here live somewhere in Belfast this Sunday, May 26th. We had already purchased our plane tickets before I ever thought to check Van's website  for his schedule. It wouldn't have mattered checking it back in November 2023 because the concert wasn't announced until February 2024.  When I finally saw that Van Morrison would be appearing live in Belfast just 2 days after we were leaving Ireland, I talked to Patrick about changing our tickets by 3 days. We decided it was going to take too much rearranging, so we chose to pass on this rare opportunity.  But here's the cool part....we saw the venue being set up on the Queens University campus and didn't realize what we were looking at until just now when I checked Van's website for the location. Van Morrison will be playing "LIVE at Botanic Gardens, Belfa
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Day 19 of 21 "The Queens University of Belfast"

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 We have one more full day in Belfast, and since we've either passed by or went into several of the famous landmarks such as The Europa Hotel, The Crown Bar, Titanic Museum, Game of Thrones movie studio, among several others, we chose to see The Queens University, Botanical Gardens and the Ulster Museum because they are all in one place and they were recommended by the teachers we met several days ago on the train north from Dublin to Belfast. The Ulster Museum was filled with the history of Ireland, from medieval days, all the way up to the civil unrest between the Protestants and Catholics. Some of the conflicts are as recent as ten years ago. We walked out into another bright sunny day.  The taxi driver who brought us from the Belfast airport to our Airbnb yesterday warned us that when it's sunny and the temperature rises above 60 degrees the shirts come off, lots of clothes come off. As we were walking to the university, we saw a group of three teenagers. The girls were wea
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