Dingle, Ireland

Dingle Peninsula is one of the most beautiful drives in Ireland.  Today, we drove from the Cliffs of Moher to Dingle and had the best drive ever! Here's a few pictures to help you understand why its amazing!

We will be spending a couple days here in Dingle to hike and explore. 

Some interesting things about the Dingle Peninsula:

- While most of Ireland speaks English, the Dingle Peninsula is known for the common use of the Irish language in everyday life. 
- There are special schools open only during the summer where children come from all over Ireland and spend the summer in Dingle to learn the Irish language.
- The Dingle Peninsula is known for being one of the best places to hear and enjoy traditional Irish music.
- Most of the villages on the Dingle Peninsula are fishing villages.
- Dingle is also known for its hiking and walking trails.  Each year there are several "festivals" where hundreds of people gather and walk or hike on these trails together.

The drive around this Ring of Dingle was beautiful. The photos are a little blurry from driving by so quickly.

We're leaving on a Jet plane

Dia dhuit!

   Summer is here and its time for some rest and relaxation, and adventure! School may be out, but its time for learning of the best kind--exploring new places and things!

Miss Crumrine and I are off on another adventure in a few short days! We are very excited to be returning to Ireland and experiencing Scotland for the first time.  Traveling is one of our favorite things and we want to share the experience with you!

   Our trip starts soon and we would love to hear from you before we go! There are several different kinds of communities we will be visiting: large metropolises (big cities) and rural areas (small towns).  We have included a list of the communities we will visit.  As we post about each place, we will include some websites that will help you in your research. As you look at pictures of these cities and read about them, write your questions down. There are some websites listed on the main page under research links for you to start learning about Ireland and Scotland. If you want us to visit a certain place or go see something that you are interested in, let us know!  

Communities we will visit in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland:
- Belfast
-Edinburgh
-Derry
-Dingle
-Clifden
- And several others!!



Have you ever wondered where the Titanic was built? We are going to investigate the answer to this question!
 

Edinburgh University is one of the oldest universities in Scotland. Learning is one of the most important parts of life, so we are going to visit and explore what this university is all about!

Why are the stones all the same perfect shape? How were they formed? We aren't sure why, but we are going to learn as much as we can!



Are you up for the Challenge??

  As we travel from place to place and post new blogs, we will include Braniac questions, Picture Clues, and Videos to help you learn.  Work with your parents, siblings, friends, or family to research and read to find the answer! The first 2 students that answer our particular questions on each post will receive a post card from us! Don't forget to let us know your address so we can send the postcard!  

We are packing and researching to get ready to go, we hope you will start getting ready to help us in our journey too!  
 

 

Belfast - Day 1

We have finally arrived! It was long trip over here and we are ready to start exploring Belfast. Today will be a little bit hard for us because of jet lag.  Have you ever had a night where you didn't sleep very much or didn't feel good? But you still had to get up and go to school anyway? That's how we feel today! We are really tired, but we need to stay awake! To help understand why its going to be hard to stay awake, lets start out by figuring out the time difference between home and Ireland.

Brainiac Question #1 - How many hours ahead of Midland time (central time) is Ireland?
**Use the link below to help you figure out the difference. (look at the Tab, "Time Here, Time There")

Time in Ireland

Now, a little bit about our first city that we are visiting- Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

A few things about Belfast:

- It is North Ireland's largest city

- Belfast has a long history of people disagreeing over religion :which church to attend: Catholic or Protestant.  This disagreement has led to some ugly fights and violence.

- The Titanic was built and launched from the city of Belfast.

-The city was bombed three times during WWII.

-Belfast is the Art and Music center of Northern Ireland.

 

 

Today was our first day here in Belfast and we hit the ground running! We walked a lot today exploring the city centre. We visited the Ulster museum and learned a lot about Irish history.  The people of Ireland have endured some difficult times, but are resilient! We also took a walking tour of Queens university.  Our favorite place was the botanical gardens and the hot houses.  Tomorrow we have a black taxi tour of Belfast planned and hopefully the Titanic museum. 

 

 

 

 

The castle in lots of movies!

Our first experience with Scotland has been absolutely amazing! Edinburgh is so full of history and life, and we are a little sad to leave. However, there are more Scottish adventures that we need to experience!

Today, we are driving from Edinburgh to Dornie.  It's one of our longest drives, and we will be driving through some gorgeous places! Miss Crumrine is now a professional at driving on the other side of the road...she's rockin' it! Some of our views today on the drive were breathtaking. 

Dornie is home to Eilean Donan Castle, the most photographed and famous Castle in Scotland.  This castle has been in several different movies!

Brainiac QuestionWhen was the castle first built?

Research Links:
Castle Research Link

Eilean Donan Castle Information

The castle was rebuilt in the early 1900's by the MacRae clan.  It was rebuilt according to the original castle layout, but they added some modern conveniences for everyday living.  The outside of the castle and the view of the castle sitting on the island is simply amazing.  We are working on getting a better picture! 

Inverness, Scotland

Our last two days in Scotland are being spent in a place full of legends and folk tales.  Miss Crumrine has been excited about this stop for a long time! As we were planning the trip, Miss Crumrine insisted we stop at Inverness, so, that's what we're doing! 

Before we post about our visit and what sites we explored, let me share a little about Inverness with you.

-  Inverness is known as the capital of the Scottish Highlands.

- In the 12th century, King David I made Inverness a royal burgh (town) and it soon developed into a busy town and port, trading in everything from fish and furs to timber and wool. A castle was built here and, later on, a bridge was built over the River Ness.

-  In 1822, the Caledonian Canal was built which helped bring trading business to Inverness.  It connected the small town with Western Scotland by providing a safe passage for ships to sail.

- Loch Ness is the largest lake in Scotland.  It has as much water as all the other lakes in Scotland put together.  It's 23 miles long.  It's so deep and cold that it doesn't allow many different kinds of animals to live there.  

We visited the Loch Ness center to learn a little more About local legends and stories on the monster.  It turned out to be quite the exhibit, explaining a lot about geology and science exhibitions, the food chains in the lake, and local stories about the monster.  The best explanation we understood was- there are many different currents that run through the lake due to it's size.  These currents move different kinds of debris which from a distance can look like a strange creature.  We also found out there were several times a person made a picture look real when it wasn't!  We took some pictures of our own to show you just how easily other things, like kayakers and logs, can make you think you're looking at something different. 

Brainiac Question  What is one story about the Loch Ness monster?

Research Links:
Stories about the Loch Ness Monster
National Geographic Facts


Brainiac Question. What are things that help make the Highlands of Scotland different from the lowlands?

Research Link:
Culture in the Highlands