Today was a fairly long day, in which we didn't do a lot more than driving... We woke up, and rushed out of the house by 10am, to drive the 3 hours to Glasgow. Once at Glasgow, we met up with some of the relatives we had met earlier on my grandfather's side as well as some new ones that I had met yet (though my mum and grandmother met them before I got here).

It was a good day, lots of old family stories and the like, but we could only stay for another three hours, because it was a three hour drive back home again! And once we got home again, we had to make sure all our bags are packed and ready to be loaded into the car, because tomorrow we're leaving, and we want to be out of the house by 10am again - we're going to visit some more family before heading saying goodbye to my cousins, and heading up towards the highlands and Loch Ness.

Now, looking left to right in that family shot, we have: my aunt Irene, my Uncle Fraser behind her. Rufus the dog, being held by Jack (my grandfather's cousin's son), my cousin Steven, Sandra, the wife of the next man, David who is Jack's cousin. Then Mary, Jack's wife in front of me, then Elmer who is Jack and David's cousin, then my grandmother and my mother last. Phew!

After making sure I'm all packed, I got an early night tonight, since we've got to be ready to leave fairly early tomorrow.

Today was a great day! Woke up early to go to Ireland! We had to catch the 10am Ferry across to Belfast, which meant we had to be at Stranraer just after 9am, which in turn meant we had to leave the house by 8am. So after the rather long drive to Stranraer, it was an even longer boat ride across to Ireland. It was an enormous boat though, with two lower decks for carrying cars and trucks, and the upper deck for carrying passengers. Inside the passenger deck, there's bars and movies and poker machines and cafés - many more things than I would think nessecary to entertain you for the 1½ hour boat ride. But it was an experience, that's for sure!

But once we got to Ireland, it got rather interesting. We got off the boat, and out the front of the terminal were all these taxis waiting to pick up passengers. Now, I've been to India, and I know what pushy taxi drivers can be like, but my parents are a little more trusting than I am, so when the taxi drivers came up to us and told us that they'll take us where we need to go to meet the bus tour we'd booked, they just took it as the truth. So we all piled into this taxi and we noted that it was £1.75 per person. So he drove us in, and we asked, "So where is it that we catch the buses?"

"Oh, you don't catch the bus, it's better in a taxi," he told us.

"But we've already paid for the bus, so we'd prefer to just go with that," we said.

So he immediatly pulls the taxi over, gets out and, comes around to our door, opens it and says, "this is where you get off."

"Well, where do we catch the bus?" we asked.

"Oh, over there," he told us, waving his arm in the general direction of one of the roads.

We were all a bit flustered at this point, since we'd just be hussled off this taxi rather preemptorally, so after we'd given him his £8.75, he asked us "Are you Australians?", and when we answered in the affermative, he mumbled something inaudible, and my mum asked him to repeat it (we just thought he had said something with a strong accent), and his reply was "You Australian's never tip!" and he walked off back to his cab.

Well, needless to say, we weren't too happy with our treatment there. After all, while we don't give a tip for someone who just does their job, we're more than happy to give you a tip if you go "beyond the call of duty," a friend smile, a nice "hello", etc. We certainly won't give you a tip for unceremoniously dumping us on the sidewalk, 250 metres (as we found) from where we actually wanted to go!

But he was really our only bad experience in Belfast - if you're ever in Northern Ireland, don't catch a taxi with the driver with the bad Parkinson's Disease (which was a bit of a worry watching him change gears anyway...). The bus tour was really fantastic - though slightly worrying, because a lot of the buildings in Belfast are still just shells and a lot of the fences in the Protestant area has very tall fences with razor wire around the top! It's also a worry seeing the British flag flying on one end of a street, and a Republic of Ireland flag on the other end.

But it was very interesting, and as the tour guide would say "the peace process and cease fires are making a big difference", and they haven't really had many problems in the recent past (well, except that incident a couple of weeks ago...). It was funny when we asked people, "Now, who's staying in this hotel?" (indicating one of the hotels), when a couple of people raised their hands, he told them, "that hotel has been bombed 36 times in the past! Though not for a long while now... I guess it's due for another one!"

One odd thing about Belfast is the fact that they all seem to be so proud of the fact that the Titanic had been built there. I mean, after all, the thing sunk on it's maiden vouyage! After telling the world it was "unsinkable"! And the tour guide kept telling us, "and this is where the smoke stacks were put on the Titanic," "and here's where the dry docks are that it was built on," "and here is where the Titanic was first floated," and the number of Titanic and Titanic-related souveniers you could buy, it was amazing! I wouldn't be proud of the fact that the biggest blunder of last century was built in my home-town...

We went to the tourist office after the tour, and bought a few souveniers. There were people trying to do survey's of the tourists opinions of Belfast. My uncle did one, and he was sure to mention the incident with the taxi driver (not that there's much they could have done! We later learned that a lot of taxi drivers in Belfast actually belong to the I.R.A!), but I thought it odd that they'd ask you about your stay in the tourist office - after all, wouldn't that be your first stop in Ireland, rather than your last, implying that you really don't know all that much about your trip? Wouldn't it be better to ask you ask you're leaving, not just after you arrive?

After that, we decided to have lunch in the famous Crown Hotel in Belfast, which we did. What an amazing pub! It was all carved wooden walls and pillars, and the actual tables were in these little booths - very classsy! The food was delicious: I had a Beef & Guiness pie (what else would I have in Ireland?) and a pint of Guiness (heh). Yum!

Once we'd had lunch, it was pretty much a matter of hopping back on the curtesy bus (yes, there was a coutesy bus from the boat to the tour buses - the taxi drivers lied to us!), and back on the boat. By the time we got home, it was after 6 o'clock, so we just had a very quick dinner, and straight to bed - I was very tired!!

We went back to the internet this morning (well, I did anyway - my mum was in the information centre booking some more B&B's for our nights once we leave Newton Stewart). After that, we had lunch in a pub with one of my grandmother's girlhood friends (in fact, she was a bride's maid at my grandmother's wedding). It was a good meal, I had Stovies, which is just like a sort of lamb and potato stew. The only problem was that I felt a bit sick afterwards. I think the food was OK, it was just a bit... I dunno... thick or something.

After lunch, we drove up to Murray's Monument. Murray was a farmer's son in the 1800's, who taught himself to read and eventually became a professor of Oriental Languages and Edinburgh University. It was pretty amazing, but this monument they erected for him was huge and (to me anyway) seemingly a little out of proportion with what he did. After all, Robert the Bruce - who liberated all of Scotland from English rule - only got a little rock, Murray gets this enormous phallac monument, and right up miles from the road.

Oh well, I was feeling a little under the weather at that time anyway, so I never bothered hiking all that way. My mum and cousin Steven did, which is how I got that picture.

I woke up a little late today, didn't get up until 8am or so. But that was OK, since we didn't leave the house until 10:30. Our first stop today was the Bladnoch Distillery, where we took a really interesting tour of the distillery. Apparently, the distillery was owned by United Distilleries until the mid-1990's, when they stopped production (when it became unecenomical). An irishman bought it in the late 90's, while he was looking for a holiday house. It took a while before he was allowed to make more whiskey, but in 2002 they started production again.

Now, it takes a while to make whiskey - most of the stuff they sell is aged 13 or 15 years, but the minimum for the spirit to be called "whiskey" is 3 years. The Bladnoch distillery doesn't age it's single malt whiskey for less than 8 years, though, so it's still going to be a while before they can sell anything distilled by the new owner. In the meantime, though, they can still sell the stuff distilled when United Brewery were the owners. I bought two bottles of their 15 year old whiskey (which is 55% alcohol content!) - one for me and one for Andrew (don't tell him! :p)

After the distillery, we went into Newton Stewart for lunch. I finally bought a nail clipper, because my fingernails were getting pretty long (I hate having long finger nails). Then we had lunch on one of the pubs in town, the Crown Hotel. It was pretty good, but the chips weren't as good as I've been used to. Big servings, of course, and the prawn cocktail was pretty good (huge serving).

Then my mum & I dropped my grandmother off at some of her friend's house and we drove up to Bruce's Stone, which is a monument to Robert the Bruce, who won independance for the Scots from Brittain in the early 14th century. It's a fair hike up to the stone, and it really is just a stone. Apparently it commemorates the spot where he dropped rocks down on a brittish army and turned them back. The view there was pretty damn spectacular, though, and the river looked to be in full swing (perhaps from all the rain we had yesterday).

We go home a bit early, so we went for a walk over the hill. There was a nice view of a storm over Newton Stewart, and lots of cows. For dinner we had a delicious baked dinner - chicken, yum!

The weather wasn't so good today. I'm told it's typical Wigtownshire weather, though - rainy, cold and windy. We started off going to the library to use their internet. The only place in Newton Stewart with internet access - no internet cafés here! Even though I can't plug my memory stick in to upload photos, and I couldn't get msn to work, it's free for an hour so I can't really complain! I didn't use up the whole hour sending emails but my cousins pretty much did. I had a look around the library at a couple of books though, so not all bad.

After that, the rain got pretty bad, but we didn't let that stop us from going to the "Cairn Holy" (I think it's spelled), which are some standing stones not unlike stonehenge. Though unlike stonehenge, which were laid by druids, these were apparently left by vikings and may have even been used for cremation! You can't really tell from the picture, but it was raining cats and dogs and I got out of the car just long enough to take a photo and get back in again :)

My mum, my grandmother and I then went to the Bradnoch Distillery, where they apparently make some pretty good Whiskey and they even have a guided tour. We were too late for the tour though, but we got some souviners in the little shop there.

The weather back to the house got much worse before we arrived, and we had to drive pretty slow for fear of driving into a tree! We got here safe, though, and had a fairly early night.