Day 3 - Road to Donegal...

 

This picture was shot as I was getting hardcore with my ISO and shutter settings on my camera and i needed a test area with good distance, foreground and background.  It is the windshield of our 53 passenger bus and was shot with my zoom from nearly the back.  

There are a lot of reasons I love this picture...the metaphor of the ever-present rain in Ireland, the very Irish row houses that are out of focus in the background, the Celtic cross that virtually symbolizes Ireland and the way our little mascot (whom I named Cirrhosis O'Rotgut) is turned just enough to shadow his identity and maybe looks like he is walking along the sidewalk in front of the houses.

I liked it so much, I continued taking the same shot as we moved through the countrysides of Galway, Sligo, Ballyshannon and on to Belleek.  Here is what I got:

 

 

Cirrhosis O'Rotgut

It was close to 4 hours climbing from the West Coast of Ireland up through the country on our way to visit the Belleek Pottery factory.  We stopped in Curry, County Sligo for lunch at the Yeats (yes, that one) County Inn - 

Tommy, Patrick, Mr. and Mrs. Finnerty

Tommy, Mr. Finnerty, Patrick, Mrs. Finnerty, Kevin, Jessica

Rebecca, Mr. Elfeldt, Ashley, Michael (our bus driver) Elisa, Josh

 

 Patrick, Mr, Finnerty, Patrick, Kevin, Brendan - bus from the front

Next we humped it another 9 hours (or so it seemed) to Northern Ireland* to Belleek to buy shit errrrrr tour the Belleek Pottery Factory.  It actually turned out to be really cool -

* for those of you who don't know, Northern Ireland is part of the UK i.e. a separate country from the Republic of Ireland - see Sunday Bloody Sunday etc. but things have cooled down considerably and its like going to Wisconsin now.

So everyday Rutger (made up name) here makes this lamp.  One a day.  Everyday.  This lamp.  Everyday.  Coming to a post office near you...

We watched artists literally fashioning decorative flowers and the like by hand and creating pottery baskets and adorning them with shamrocks and other Irish tourist-cliche using fine brushes.  I had always thought 'hand crafted' meant 9 year old hands in Shijiazhuang China.

Jim, Jack and Bob

Jessica & Mr. Hughes

Patrick, Jack, Bob, Jim

Random - Mr. Finnerty gets a head hug