Leading on from Arganth's culture suggestins below, I went to some good places in...

Ireland last week:

Athlone Castle - very interesting, also a quirk in that the two places I have lived in and loved have also been the homes for people who at various stages tried to take over Ireland for themselves, and used the River Shannon and Athlone as their starting point - Bishop Of Norwich in 1210 , and the King of Wurttemberg some years later.

Kilmainham Jail in Dublin - scene of the controversial executions following the 1916 Easter Uprising. Also told the story of how those easy going Irish Catholics used to jail kids from the age of 5 - like one girl, aged 7, who stole a cloak. She was made to work in the stonebreaking yard in the jail for 1 year, and then sent to a correctional facility for FIVE years. And all of this was little more than 100 years ago.

Clonmachnoise in the Irish Midlands - amazing place (apart from being possibly the best road I have ever driven on to get to it, but glad it was a hire car, as you could see massive gouges taken out of the tarmac where unsuspecting drivers have driven more than 20 miles an hour on it, grounding their cars in the process and quite possibly ripping off their oil sumps). Scene of early Christianity in the West - built around 500AD by some mad monk, it has over the years been razed to the ground or plundered for its wealth over 50 times - all by people who were either afraid of clever people and wanted to stop education and religion - or by gold hungry pillagers (normally the Vikings or the English). I'm not religious by any means, but the place had an amazing aura when you considered the monumental events and catastrophies that had taken place there over the years.

Lovely old culture.

Posted By: Yellalee, Sep 28, 12:22:52