The Ulster American Folk Park.

On Thursday we went to the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh in Northern Ireland. Basically it is an open air museum which tells the story of the emigration from Ulster in Ireland to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. It shows both the old world and the new and illustrates the various aspects of emigrant life on both sides of the Atlantic. The museum was really interesting and some of the houses from Ireland were the original houses of the emigrates that have been restored and others were replicates of what the originals looked like. They had people dressed up as people from that time who told you about each site that you walked into. Some where baking bread other showing us how they use to make medicine and others showing us how they printed papers.


Ulster street. The traditional Irish street. This was a recreation of the shops from the 19th century. The shops included a chemist, spirit grocers and a printers. The machines in the printers shop was an original from the 1700's. The man in this site printed us an exact replica of what a ticket would have looked like in the 18th century.

Weavers cottage - Inside a typical weavers house.

Mellon Homestead: A small part of the birthplace of Thomas Mellon, who emiograted at age 5 with his family in 1818. The house stands on its original site.

The meeting house - This was a replica of the Church in the town.

This was on the American side. The first house that one emigrate Thomas Mellon occupied when he first arrived in America with his family.

We took heaps of other photos but didn't want to over kill it with the museum stuff. Anyways Today Friday is our third last day with the family. As of Monday Gav and I are off on our own. Saturday we are heading back into Sligo for his Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. Sunday we are heading up into County Mayo to see the Ceide Feilds then to his aunt Mary's for dinner and then Monday is D day. We head down to Galway first. Today (Friday) we had a pretty chilled out day, we were so tired (went out the night before and had a little too much to drink) so we walked into Donegal town and Gav sat in a nice little coffee shop while I went looking round some shops. Found a nice new dress. Then went out on Marie and Peter's boat in the Bay. Was a relaxing day but was needed.I will try and keep you all posted as much as possible but it may be a bit harder as we won't have a computer available to us all the time. Missing you all but at the same time having a fantastic time. The weather has been pretty good and touch wood we haven't had much rain.

Love to you all stay safe and will keep you updated

Bec and Gav

xoxox