After Newgrange we drove northwards, crossed the border into Northern Ireland (though we only realised that when we saw that the road signs were back to the same as UK), and ended up at Killadeas on Lough Erne. 

This was the luxury portion of our trip - we stayed at the Manor House Hotel, a rather impressive place on the edge of the Lough.  The reason for this extravagance is that this house is where Great-Great-Grandpa Irvine grew up (we felt we should get some discount, since technically it's our family home, but…)

We had a very nice room that looked out across the lawn & fountain.  I took the king-size bed (and left mum with a single!), and on our first evening we took it in turns to laze around the room or luxuriate in the bath in the lovely bathroom.

Next morning we had a full breakfast included, then we headed off to Irvinestown (since they named it after us), and saw the original castle Irvine (now an equine studies college).  Then down to Enniskillen where mum continued the family history research in the local library & I checked out the arts & crafts Buttermarket (not that impressive, really). 

We had very good ice-cream in the afternoon from a farm in Killadeas (you can even go and watch the cows being milked, tho we didn't).  And then we made use of the hotel facilities - mum swam a little & relaxed in the spa, whilst I swam about 50 laps of the pool (probably about 1km). 

We had a dinner included in our package, so we pretended to dress up a little & had a very nice 3-course meal, sitting out in the little glass conservatory bit of the dining room.  It was lovely, although really 3 courses is way too much food, but whatever! 

This morning mum had a massage whilst I did another 50 pool laps, then we sadly had to pack up and move out, although it would have been lovely to just live the luxurious life a little longer.  It was cool walking through the big entrance hall and the drawing room area and thinking that this was where our ancestors used to hang out.