A mans home may seem to be his castle on the outside; inside, it is more often his nursery.

After leaving the swinging bridge, the next stop was Dunluce Castle. This was to be my first honest to goodness castle experience, and it is a doozie. This nearly epitomizes the idea of an old European castle used in the feudal age. It was well situated on the cliffs and even had a somewhat secret way into a sea cave directly underneath by which emergency escapes might be made if necessary. After parking we first walked down the road, hopped a fence, and trudged across a field to set up the camera system so I could get in another detailed panoramic shot. The wind was pretty strong, so the quality of the pano isn't as good as I had hoped, but it still it gives as decent a representation of the awesome view. After taking the automated shots we heading into the castle and explored for a while before having a nice lunch at the local cozy eatery and then heading off to meet with some friends of my travel partner, Alina.

Dunluce Castle Gigapan; http://gigapan.org/gigapans/52178/

You know it's summer in Ireland when the rain warms up.

Travel isn't just a state of place, it can be a state of persona as well as a state of mind. The more I have experienced of this world, the more I want to see and do. The past couple of years I've really picked up the pace in terms of exploring my world and trying to not only find myself (the walkabout never really ends) but to also simply become more aware of the surroundings. Over the past couple of months, a few grand opportunities came up that I could not easily forgo in terms of travel opportunities. So, after spending a fair amount of time researching via Google Earth, blogs, and wiki-pages, I heading out for the next adventure. Yesterday morning found me at Tampa Airport once again to head out. I left Tampa at 2:45, stopped briefly in Atlanta, and then boarded the red-eye flight to Dublin. I landed around 6AM, passed through customs pretty easily, and met up with Alina, my travel partner for the next week. We had mat at a skydiving function last July lives in Ireland currently. After dropping off some stuff and getting cleaned up, we headed out of town. The first quick stop was the site of the Battle of the Boyne. There really wasn't too much to the site other than a clear field and interpretative center, so after wandering aorund for a short time, we headed off to Newgrange.

New grange is a World Heritage Site and basically a prehistoric monument built as a burial and religious site. The inner chamber was designed such that light from the rising sun during the winter solstice hits the floor and thus lighting the space. Visitors get to see this effect during a tour through the use of electric lights. While only one of the mounds was open, it was a fun enough experience and my first opportunity to see the truly expansive green hills of the famous Irish countryside. On the way towards Belfast, the car tire had a blowout, and while there was a jack in the car, a lug wrench was not to be found (vehicle ownership 101). Fortunately within 10 minutes a kind gentleman stopped by, brought out the right-sized socket wrench, and we were switched over within a few minutes.

We got into Belfast just around dark to explore for a little bit. Even though there were no borders, immigration control offices, or even signs, Northern Ireland is still technically governed by the British Government and United Kingdom, so I'm going to count this as the next country ticked off the list. After parking, we walked the water front a bit along the Lagan Weir and pedestrian bridge at the floodgates. After taking a few shots at the clock tower, we meandered over to the Belfast Wheel, which is a smaller copy of the 'London Eye'. It, unfortunately, ceased operations a couple of weeks later (April 2010). After dinner we barely made it to the parking garage as the last employee was leaving and convinced them to generously allow us out, otherwise it might have been a cold night on the streets. As it was, we headed towards Bushmills and found, again at the last moment as employees were leaving, a place to stay at a the Causeway hotel. When we arrived the place was closed, but wandering around the building I found an employee just about to leave while tossing out the rubbish. It was a very exhausting day starting at 6AM and ending just before mid-night and was nearly cut short many times with just minutes to spare, but was all-in-all a good start of a trip.

When art is understood by everybody, it will cease to be art

I was going to go climbing today, but my ankle is a little wonky from the adventure race Saturday morning and general exhaustion of the race, beer fest, and late night party. I did, however, make it over to the Gasparilla Art Fest downtown. While trying to get a bit more involved with my own interest in photography, I was most wanting to see the different styles of artists. One of the things I started to realize, never have had any formal art and design training, is that the framing or packaging of the art, especially photography, is almost equally critical to the success of the subject matter.