Toay was what we refe to as a "moving day", getting luggage down from rooms to the bus by the porters and having our last breakfast at the Nuremore Hotel.
Our tour today was to take us north into the United Kingom of Great Britain known as Northern Ireland. For me personally, the world changes as we pass across the border, where for almost twenty five years there has been no barricades, road blocks, police or soldiers manning the crossing points from the Republic into the North. I don't have these feelings when I'm in England, it has to do with the fact that historically, our island of Ireland has been divided and ruled for so long by the Crown of England, but the land belongs to Ireland. The North, since 1921, has been partitioned from the Republic because the ruling class Unionists and their followers refused to be a part of Ireland as one country, hence the name Unionist with the UK.
As many of you know the "Troubles" boiled over in the 1960's and it was not until 1993 that the "Good Friday" Peace Agreement brought a continued peace to this day, that still delicately holds the Catholic and Protestant communities together. Time will still tell.
We arrived at the Ulster American Folk Park in Omaha, Co. Tyrone where we were treated to live demonstrations of Irish life in the 18th and 19th centuries. Why emigration took so many Irish people from all parts of Ireland to the United States in those days. We saw a blacksmith hammer horse shoes into shape, weavers making cloth, shop keepers selling the wares of the time. All of these old homes were on the site of the original Andrew Mellon's, as in Carnegie Mellon, family home.
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