• Luggage Collection: 7:15 AM

• Wheels Up: 8:30 AM

We started our day with a local guide telling us about Derry/Londonderry.  It seemed to focus mostly around the conflict between the Catholic and Protestants. Threads of history continue to unfold on a tour of Derry; among its sites were the St. Columb's Cathedral, the Bloody Sunday Memorial marking the troubled events of 1972, and wall murals painted since the peace process began in 1994 with messages reflecting the cultural identities of local residents.

We disembarked from the bus and were greeted by another local guide for a walking tour of its old city walls, marking the only completely walled city in the British Isles. This tour was mostly along the wall of the interior of the city and ended at a central square, or round-a-bout.  We were given 40 British Pounds for lunch and cut loose to walk around to get a first-hand feel of Derry/Londonderry.  Since Carol and I weren’t looking for much of a lunch we stopped at a Starbucks and had a Latte break.  We later met up with fellow travelers and the bus near the city hall. Londonderry was a very hilly town, so no matter where you went, you were going either up hill or downhill.

From Derry, we headed to the Ulster American Folk Park which tells the stories behind three centuries of Irish emigrants who sought to make new lives in North America.  The Ulster American Folk Park was a walking tour through a beautiful forested park.  It has several building that portrayed different elements of the Irish immigrants lives as they went from homesteading to schools to crossing the Atlantic on ship to the “New World”.  It was very well done and well worth the price of admission. While this is a type of an amusement park/museum I was very impressed with the amount of detail in the story and the narrators that they had stationed at most of the buildings.  I took a little break at the ship and talked to a gentleman who was the “Captain” of the ship.  He was very knowledgeable and very talkative.  He did mention that he really appreciated the quality of tourist that Tauck brings to the park.  I passed on the complement to our tour director, Madeleine.  The Ulster American Folk Park is a must see if you are in the area of Derry/Londonderry.

Next, we travelled to our resort hotel, which provided beautiful vistas of the Irish lake district. This was the Lough Este Castle, the first castle that we stayed, and it was a combination on old castle and new accommodations, very nice.  We were greeted with the staff out in front of the entrance waving to the bus as it pulled into the front of the castle.  It was a little showy, but still a very nice Tauck touch.

As soon as we arrived, we made reservations for dinner for the next two nights. We had dinner in their restaurant, the Cedars Restaurant, which was very good and very elegant.  One of the experiences that I like most about traveling is meeting new people from different countries.  The first night at Lough Este Castle we met a very delightful waitress from the Ukraine.  She had been working in Ireland for about two years.