Crosses of all different kinds

The first day was a bit short.  After the previous tour weekend, I wasn't all that excited about taking another one but I realized that I could never see all that I wanted to see otherwise.  It helped that my tour guide this time was great.  He was a member of the Irish Army, so, naturally, he couldn't speak a sentence without a few curse words sprinkled in. =)  Quite the character.

He gave us a little rundown on Dublin itself, but I don't remember much of that at all now.  A little outside the city we stopped by the field where the Pope gave mass to over one million people!  Very pretty, sacred place.

We then stopped by the Clanmacnoise Monastery somewhere between Dublin and Galway.  The monastery, also, was a very sacred place and quite beautiful in it's serenity.  He told us the story of the Whispering Arch and how priests used that as a means of talking to people with the plague while remaining, relatively, safe.

We then stopped in the cosmopolitan city of Galway for the night.  I liked this city better than Dublin.  But at this point, despite the unpleasant and uncooperative weather, the Irish countryside was already winning my heart.