Ireland Part III (Days Out)

We did manage to fit a few other things in among beach days and the wedding. One place we managed to spend a couple of days was The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Holywood. We got free trial passes in an offer from one of the Sunday papers and they definitely got good use! The museums are separate but situated on the same site so on our first trip we managed to do both.

Beth loved the Folk Museum as all of the houses were furnished, some had fires lit and quite a lot of them had people all dressed up ready to answer questions and demonstrate stuff. I have to say that the first trip was mainly taken up with them running wildly between houses, shops, banks, schools, sweet shops, etc. generally causing chaos!

It was pretty impressive the amount of detail and care that had gone into every building - kinda wasted on kids. ;) Despite making it back for a second trip, I'd quite like to go back without the kids sometime just to have a proper look at everything and appreciate the attention to detail - can't imagine that happening since both Beth and Toby continue asking to go back.

The Transport Museum was also worth seeing and of course was Toby's favourite. He was rather obsessed with the orange Herbie car and was very reluctant to leave it - said it would be lonely! Again I enjoyed wandering round, the trains were impressive and the Titanic exhibition was pretty interesting. I suspect that Beth enjoyed playing on the trains, planes and motorbikes just as much as 'playing' at the folk museum but she would vehemently deny this if asked! Anyway, a very successful introduction to museums.

Steve took his bike over with us so he could do a few rides. I don't think he quite did the mileage he wanted but he did get out for a long ride on one day. I was going to drive to meet him for lunch at the end of this ride but on the way, to entertain the kids I took them to Castle Espie wetlands. I had been as a child and had good memories of it and hopefully Beth and Toby will have the same.

They seemed to have a great time. Don't think we really saw that many birds - apart from the ducks and geese we fed, the others didn't stick around once they heard us coming! We did rather a whistle stop tour and could have spent quite a bit longer there, another place the kids just keep asking to go back to.

The last little outing we went on was to Exploris, the aquarium in Portaferry. The last time we went to an aquarium it was using our season tickets at the Long Beach aquarium. This one was rather like a poor cousin in comparison but the kids enjoyed it all the same since they had nothing in memory to compare it to. We did two loops of the entire aquarium as it didn't take very long. Toby made friends with a stingray - it kept popping up to say hello. :)

I think it was a great summer holiday - must have been since the kids just want to go back to all the places we've been, hope we can match it next year!

One last little bit. Toby has got quite into his drawing recently so I thought it would be nice to highlight it. Here he is with his picture of a scooter. :)