We have mainly been staying at home and taking care of the guinea pigs and cooking because it has been raining almost every day.
Waiting for their home to be cleaned
But we have found some good weather during part of the day to do a little exploring. We went to Clandon Park, a home owned by the National Trust. It is an early 18th-century Palladian mansion. It caught fire in 2015 and the entire inside was destroyed. The Trust has decided to restore this mansion to its former glory. But right now you can only go in to see it with hard hats and a tour guide. 
They have photographs of what the inside looked like before the fire, and you can see what a precious historical house looks like now.
Marble hall before the fire
After the fire
Here are some other photographs of the damage that the house sustained.
Some wall paper made it through and will be copied for the restored room
A marble fireplace that is still there
A bedroom window
This statue must have fallen into the ashes (notice her broken knee) and was put back up into her niche with wooden safety bars.
You have to applaud the grit of the National Trust to tackle this extensive restoration. It is also important for people to see what happens to historical buildings when fire rips through them.
We also had time to go the the Watts Memorial chapel in Compton. This is an extraordinary example of Art Nouveau version of Celtic Revival style in the village cemetery. It was designed by Mary Fraser-Tytler,
the wife of the artist George Fredric Watts. 
Outside panel of terracotta reliefs
Amazingly, “A group of local amateurs and enthusiasts, many of whom later went on with Mary Fraser-Tytler to found the Compton’s Potter Guild, constructed the chapel from 1896 to 1898; virtually every village resident was involved. ” ( Wikipedia ). I think it is an incredible example of the Victorian sensibilities around a craft movement to inspire social improvement by using creative craft arts. Here are some of the angels that line the inside of the chapel.
These are all made from clay that was found on the Watts estate and hand crafted by Mary and the villagers. They painted and gilded the work in gold leaf. It is a truly stunning example of what ordinary people can do when their creative artistry is unleashed.
in case the loved one might have lost their way to their heavenly reward. There are many praying angels (perhaps for those who the living are afraid they have lost their way). 
But the one I liked the most was this giant dog on top of a monumental grave howling to the sky. Whether he is missing his master or protecting him it is hard to tell.
We paid for a tour (€10 each) and got to go into his crypt under the tower. We had an excellent tour guide Niall who told us all the stories of the National heroes who are buried in this cemetery.
This photo was taken in the O’Connell crypt. One of the creepier things was that in a room adjacent to O’Connell’s tomb, there is a pile of caskets stacked up.
These caskets belong to direct decedents of the great man who want to be buried with him. There is only one caveat, only their bodies can be stored here. No wife, child, husband or auntie allowed to be with them. I believe there are only 9 decedents who have decided to take the cemetery up on their offer. So far. And there is not much room left.
There are always fresh flowers on his grave and there is a mysterious French woman who comes every year to say a prayer and put flowers on his grave. This is what the site IrishCentral has to say about her.” A mysterious French lady will visit Michael Collins’ grave once again this year (2016) , continuing a 15-year tradition since she fell in love with the Irish revolutionary after watching the movie “Michael Collins”. She is known as the “Mysterious French Lady” and she appears like clockwork at his grave and lays them down gently before saying a prayer. The woman has been identified as Veronique Crombie, a lecturer at the French National Museum who admits to a passionate love for the Irish revolutionary.”
The Irish are very good at honoring their recent political heroes who fought so hard to secure their rights and to make their homeland a free Republic.
It is a wonderful city to visit, and we enjoyed our week there very much. This was our apartment in the student section of the city. 
We remember what it was like to be a young university student with all of those stairs. This is the city where the Claddagh ring was first made. 
David bought me one 17 years ago when we first came to Galway, and I am wearing it today. If the heart on the ring points to your body that means you are taken, if it faces away that means you are available. 
I am definitely taken.
This is the Corrib River that runs through the city and where people can fish for salmon. Most of the oldest parts of the city have been destroyed, but the Spanish arch from the 16th century that was part of the city walls is still standing. 
The people are very hardy here. We walked down to the Galway bay promenade which is in a part of the city called Salthill. There we watched some brave young people jump off the Blackrock Tower into the freezing (well, darn cold) ocean (54 degrees). 
But the young ones are not the only people to brave the cold ocean. We met Aidan and his dog Ross as he was getting ready to go out and swim in the bay. He says he does this every day, all year long, and that the water temperature does get as low as 39 degrees. He was telling us about the group of older people who do the same thing, mentioning another hardy swimmer who had halted his daily swim only a year before his death at the age of 93. I think this is how they live so long. 
The bus driver Mike told us about the landscapes and the history of this part of Ireland. We stopped for a quick break at the village of Leenane to see the start of the Killary fjord. 
Then we went on to the Kylemore Abbey. This is a lovely castle that was built on an isolated lake by a merchant named Mitchell Henry for his wife. 
She died just four years later at 45; he was heartbroken and built this Gothic mini church in her memory.
Around the 1920s, a group of Benedictine nuns who had been bombed out of Ypres, Belgium, in World War I bought the property and made it into a girls school, which they ran until declines in numbers of both teachers and students forced its closure in 2010. Now it is a romantic tourist attraction.
We hopped on the bus to catch a ferry to the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. 
We went to Inishmore, the largest of the 3 Aran islands, and it is like stepping back in time. When we got off the ferry we found Tomas ( he is featured in Rick Steves’s 2004 video about the island) and his red van. There were four couples that he piled into his mini van for a 3-hour tour of the island. He took us to the end of the island to see the ruins of the seven churches. There are actually only the remains of two 8 – 13th century churches and a graveyard. 
Then he drove us to the main tourist site, Dun Aonghasa, which is a iron age ring fort at the edge of a 300 foot cliff. We had 2 hours on our own here at the fort. Tomas told us that it was a 15 minute walk up to the fort. Well, it turned out to be a 30 minute hike up hill.
When we made it through the rock doorway this is what we saw.
Or tourist natural selection, as you can see here; that is a straight drop to the ocean.
There are prehistoric artifacts and tombs throughout the Burren. We went to a stone ring fort (Catherconnell) that has been settled from the 7th century AD and was used up to the 15th century. Here is a model of what it might have looked like in the past. 
You can see that there are thick stone walls around the settlement. These walls were made in the simplest way with local stones just stacked up upon themselves. 
It was fascinating to see how people lived on this land. There are tombs that have been found from the neolithic period (4000-2500 BC). Later, we drove out to this communal tomb called the Poulnabrone dolmen tomb. 
It was dark, windy and cold when we walked up the stones to see this ancient monument. It was quite moving. It humbled me to see how transitory our lives and problems are in the scope of the sweep of human time. There are dozens of these tombs around, and many more still buried and waiting to be discovered.
We bought more internet time so I can post whenever I want. Yeah! We have had nice weather for the last couple of days. Sunset is now around 8:30 pm which is nice as we can use our balcony for a longer period if time. Here is David having room service lunch on our balcony. 
Today we had to stop in the Azores to let two sick people off the ship so they could go to a proper hospital.
Now we are off to Lisbon and will be there in a day and a half. Today is April 30, I do not know how to change the date. More later.
Since it was Sunday night we all got invitations to bring pupus ( little munchies) and make it a party with food. 
The pupus were excellent and everyone is crowding around the snack table to try the tempting morsels. Ladies were asking for recipes and talking about their sea adventures here on the island.
