Ardara through Letterkenny to Londonderry/Derry

 We kept moving from Donegal onto Ardara for the night. This is the hotel, Nesbitt Arms, we stayed at that is 183 years old!  Very nice. After dinner we looked in on the Irish dancing which is much like square dancing and the reel.  We resisted joining them :)
A little Irish humor...when we asked about the soup du jour, "the soup du jour is always vegetable soup"

Onto Letterkenny..as we traveled we passed this tractor parade of hundreds of tractors.  Still have no idea why they had this event. No one seemed to know. It started to rain on their parade..but what is new in Ireland?  The picture below is on our way but notice there are no trees on the mountains. (sorry about the picture, the program is doing strange things to me)

We have arrived in Londonderry/ Derry. You will hear both names. This is one of the only walled city in Europe.  The wall encompasses 30 arcres and is 20 ft. 17th century walls built in 1614- 1618. This city is fascinating.- The history is unbelievable.  I thought most of the battles had taken place in Belfast but not so. There were 4,000 that came to establish a settlement and had to defend the city many times over.

Our tour quide walking backwards. I put this picture in so you could see how wide the wall is.- 30 feet in some places.  We are walking on top of it.

 This picture is about the siege of 1688-89 where 13 apprentice boys slammed the city gates in the face of the Catholic King,James II. The battle took 105 days. They were reduced to eating dogs, cats, and laundry starch.

This church is within the walled city and is the highest point as well as the oldest building.

surrounding views..cemetary in the background.

 This picture, along with 11 other murals around the area, depict the reminder of the painful pasts.  This picture called the "Death of Inocence" is of a young girl that was shot with 2 bullets to the head.-"The Peoples Gallery"- you can see another to the right of the girl.

We were told that this green area was a mess with shanty buildings and starving people trying to survive.  The city has spent a great deal of time and money to make it one of the safest city to walk through. Here in this area was the battle known as Bloody Sunday- a 3 day riot which lasted 38 years.  In 2008 England finally apoligized for starting the battle.

I took this as the stone resting against the wall are gravestones. The little church of Ireland is to the left.

Presbyterian church had been bombed out and now restored.  This is within the wall . It opened with many famous political and religious people coming together to help restore the peace of the city from all sides.

This is the oldest department store in the world.

-another picture of one of the gates. There were 4 originally but now there are 8.

Ice cream- notice how they present it.--very good :)

Just a pretty building that we see often as we traveled through.  On to Belfast traveling up along the coast.   Cheerio..