Vacations Blog

Unique tradition, wonderful landscapes and virgin forests along with friendly and open people, Romania makes a great place to visit and once visited, you’re surely coming back!

Unique tradition, wonderful landscapes and virgin forests along with friendly and open people, Romania makes a great place to visit and once visited, you’re surely coming back!

A few years ago if you had asked someone where Romania was they would have said, “I don’t know”. These days almost everybody has heard in one way or another of this small country, what they don’t know is that Romania is a great place to come if you want to experience things in a more laid back fashion. In Romania you can hike, visit the Black sea, the monasteries or just find out about the Romanian culture.

Transylvania

Transylvania is the place that sparks the imagination: Dracula, dark spooky castles, mountains covered in mist…well Transylvania does have all that and more.
Ok, ok maybe there isn’t a real Dracula that drinks everybody’s blood, but there was a Vlad Tepes that ruled his people with an iron fist. It is from him that the Dracula legends came from.

Brasov is the place to go if you are interested in seeing monuments dating back to the 14th century, there are the Black Churches and a, “must see” is “Castelul Bran”, the castle where the prince Vlad Tepes lived and reigned.

Also while you are in the area make sure you visit the “Peles Palace”, it was built in 1883 by King Carol.

The Peles Palace was built in a sophisticated architecture and it is right at the foot of the mountains that gives the place a story like landscape.

Another place of interest in Transylvania is Sighisoara , this town is one of the oldest medieval cities in all of Europe! Cobblestone streets, ancient towers and secret passages, Sighisoara has them all!

Wherever you chose to go in Transylvania you can be sure to find people still living in their traditional ways, you will get to see people dress in the traditional clothing and you will get to eat homemade cheese and traditional food. What more could a person want?

Maramures

No place in the world can compare to this small corner of Romania (in the north of the country); people have kept their traditions for generations, and this truly is a place where change comes with scant steps. The best time of year to come to Maramures is either in the winter or the spring.

During the winter holidays, people dress up in big sheepskin costumes (as a popular tradition of the place)and wear big ugly masks representing different animals, now these costumes have big bells on them and the men run up and down the streets making the bells ring. In December, in Sighet (a small town of the county), all the different people, with their costumes, come from the surrounding villages celebrating and having fun with different contest in town. If you want to see something unique, this is the place to come!

During the spring, especially around Easter, you can see people in their colorful, traditional clothes taking baskets of food to the priest to be blessed. The churches in Maramures are usually very big with huge bell towers in them, to call everybody to church on Sundays.

In Sapanta, a village near Sighet, is the “Cimitirul Vesel”, or the “Merry Cemetery”; in this cemetery all the headstones have poems or short stories about the people buried there. This is the only place in the world where you can find something like that!

The Black Sea

If you like the sea, go to the Black Sea! Huge expanses of golden sand for sunbathing, beautiful water and gorgeous florae and fauna. There are places to go all up and down the coast where you can find good hotels and just nice spots for vacation.

The Danube Delta

People that went to wonderful and famous places all around the world claim that The Danube Delta is a place they will never forget. This gorgeous landscape is formed by Danube River after a 2860 Km of flowing from Germany to the Black Sea. The river, in its course, gathers the tributary streams from 10 different countries, and no wonder that at its final, it covers a surface of 2681 square kilometers, and it is increasing every year with 40 m because of the 67 million tones of alluvial deposits brought by the river. If you go there, you will be surprised by over 1200 different species of plants and trees, more than 300 species of birds, which is the richest collection from all Europe, and 100 types of fish.

This natural reservation is unique in whole Europe! If you want to see nature in its beauty, there is the place to go. Many other places are waiting for you to visit. Virgin woods and spots that will make you feel one with nature.

With friendly people and a whole lot of locations to see and enjoy, Romania has something for everybody and that makes it a great place to visit!

By Claudia Miclaus

Although its awesome grandeur and beauty are the major attractions of the Grand Canyon, perhaps its most vital and valuable aspect lies in the time scale of Earth history that is revealed in the exposed rocks of the canyon walls. No other place on Earth compares with the Grand Canyon for its extensive and profound record of geologic events.

The canyon’s record, however, is far from continuous and complete. There are immense time gaps, many millions of years are unaccounted for by gaps in the strata in which either vast quantities of Earth materials were removed by erosion or there was little or no deposition of Earth materials. Thus rock formations of vastly different ages are separated only by a thin, distinct surface that reveals the vast unconformity in time.

Briefly summarized, the geologic history of the canyon strata is as follows. The crystallized, twisted, and contorted unstratified rocks of the inner gorge at the bottom of the canyon are granite and schist about two billion years old. Overlying these very ancient rocks is a layer of limestones, sandstones, and shales that are more than 500 million years old. On top of these are rock strata composed of more limestones, freshwater shales, and cemented sandstones that form much of the canyon’s walls and represent a depositional period stretching over 300 million years. Overlying these canyon rocks is a thick sequence of Mesozoic Era rocks (245 to 66.4 million years old) that form precipitous buttes remnants and the vermilion, white, and pink cliff terraces of southern Utah but which have been entirely eroded away in the area of the Grand Canyon proper. Of relatively recent origin are overlying sheets of black lava and volcanic cones that occur a few miles southeast of the canyon and in the western Grand Canyon proper, some estimated to have been active within the past 1,000 years.

The cutting of the mile-deep Grand Canyon by the Colorado River is an event of relatively recent geologic history that began not more than six million years ago, when the river began following its present course. The Colorado River’s rapid velocity and large volume and the great amounts of mud, sand, and gravel it carries swiftly downstream account for the incredible cutting capacity of the river. Prior to the building of the Glen Canyon Dam, the sediments carried by the Colorado River were measured at an average of 500,000 tons per day. Conditions favorable to vigorous erosion were brought about by the uplift of the region, which steepened the river’s path and allowed deep entrenchment.

The depth of the Grand Canyon is due to the cutting action of the river, but its great width is explained by rain, wind, temperature, and chemical erosion, helped by the rapid wear of soft rocks, all of which steadily widened it. Amazingly, the canyon was cut by a reverse process, for the river remained in place and cut through the rocks as the land moved slowly upward against it. Only thus can be explained the canyon’s east-to-west course across a south-facing slope and the presence of plateaus that stand across the river’s course without having deflected it.

The most significant aspect of the environment that is responsible for the canyon is frequently overlooked or not recognized. Were it not for the arid climate in the surrounding area, there would be no Grand Canyon. Slope wash from rainfall would have removed the canyon walls, the stair step topography would long ago have been excavated, the distinctive sculpturing and the multicolored rock structures could not exist, the Painted Desert would be gone, and the picturesque Monument Valley would have only a few rounded hillocks.

Grand Canyon National Park is one of the world’s premier natural attractions, attracting about five million visitors per year. Overall, 83% were from the United States: California (12.2%), Arizona (8.9%), Texas (4.8%), Florida (3.4%) and New York (3.2%) represented the top domestic visitors. Seventeen percent of visitors were from outside the United States; the most prominently represented nations were the United Kingdom (3.8%), Canada (3.5%), Japan (2.1%), Germany (1.9%) and The Netherlands (1.2%).

This canyon is a gift that transcends what we experience. Its beauty and size humbles us. The Grand Canyon we visit today is a gift from past generations. Take time to enjoy this gift. It is more than a pleasuring ground for those that explore the roads, hike the trails, or float the currents of the turbulent Colorado River.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the Grand Canyon surely deserves to be included on your “to visit” list.

By Claudia Miclaus

The Valley of the kings is a place full of history and all its visitors can surely reassure you of that. Egypt and his mysteries are waiting for you to discover them as well!

Gates of the King, better known as Valley of the Kings, is a valley that can be found in Egypt where tombs for the Pharaohs were built for about 500 years; not only the pharaohs but basically if you were rich enough and powerful enough in the Egyptian society, then you got to have your tomb built there. This valley can be found along the west bank of the Nile river right across form Thebes now known as Luxor. Even though the name is in the singular, the “Valley” is actually made up of two valleys, the East Valley and the West Valley.

This is arguable the most famous archaeological sight in the world, we have had archaeologists digging in the dirt in these valley for many years…what made it famous though is the fact that it was here where they discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen; you know the tomb that had the curse of the pharaohs on it?

The Hills of Thebes have one hill in particular that dominates all the rest, it is known(translated) as “The Peak” and it is thought that this is what gave rise to the pyramids of the Old Kingdom. They think that because the hill is being seen on the form of a pyramid when you look at it from the right distance.

The Isolation of the area allowed the tombs to be guarded because of the reduced access. It is strange that what has come to be a symbol in the world’s eyes of ancient Egypt ( the pyramids on the Giza Plateau) really is not the way they did things back then; most of the tombs that can be found were cut out of rock, even most pyramids have sections in them that were cut out of solid rock, you can even find solid rock tombs that date back thousands of years! So what is with the pyramid craze?

There was a time when Egypt was not united, they had separate rulers and separate ideas; when the country was united, at long last the pharaohs wanted to show off their new power and the only way that they could think of to do this, was to build these huge elaborate tombs that told everybody what great people they were.

The Valley itself has about 63 tombs, the first being that of Thutmose the first and the last being Ramesses X. Like I mentioned before, even though the valley is called “Valley of the Kings”, there were all kinds of nobles buried there and nobles wives and children, so instead of calling it “Valley of the Kings” they should have called it “Valley of the Rich and Powerful”.

During the eighteenth dynasty, the only people that got to have big beautiful tombs were the kings themselves; when somebody was buried that was not of royal blood, they got to have a much smaller tomb, basically a chamber cut into the rock, this tomb was usually near the tomb of his master…kind of interesting when you think about it.

There was a little village called Deir el-Medina, this is where the workers lived; they built the tombs and decorated them. People have been interested in this place for a while, this has been he sight for major modern Egyptological exploration…before this it was just a place for tourism (a few hundred years ago of course). The strange thing is that even though they have been exploring this place for years, only eleven of the tombs have ever been completely recorded….now why is that? Eleven out of 63.

The Gate of the King, it might be gate of the King but almost all of the tombs have been ransacked…so much for having even a little bit of respect for the dead.

Today tourism is going on good in the valley, there are usually about 16 tombs open to the public (never at the same time of course). Photography is not allowed and people are expected to touch nothing and to walk in single file through the tomb not making a sound (don’t want to disturb the dead you know).

The Gate of the King is an interesting place with an even more interesting history. I highly recommend visiting if you ever get the chance!

By Claudia Miclaus

London’s bridges offer great views of the city but of course each bridge has its story and distinctive personality and some of them are loaded with history. Discover them!

I do not know under how many bridges of Thames, the heroes of the English writer Jerome K. have passed, “Three in a boat…”, but I have numbered at least four of them dating back in those times: Chelsea Bridge, Westminster Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge and Tower Bridge. These, as well as seven more, cross Thames, through all London.

Vauxhall

Built in 1916, this is the first London Bridge on which trams circulated. It is unique because of the bronze figures placed at its endings, figures that represent the Agriculture, the Architecture, the Beautiful Arts, Education and Science. A closed illustration for the creativity of the human kind is the Tate Art Gallery built for the decoration of the bridge. The gallery received the first 65 paintings from a noble of the last century. Today, the rooms of the Tate Art Gallery are full of thousands of paintings and sculptures, a true national collection, from the Renascence till our days.

Lambeth

On the four peaks of the bridge, your eyes are caught by the pineapple fruits carved there to remind of John Tradescant, a landscape painter from the court of Charles the 1st, the illustrious gardener that brought the pineapple in England. On one of the banks of the river, the huge building of the Lambeth Palace virtuously shows its dignity, the London residence of the Canterbury archbishop.

Westminster

The Westminster Bridge is particularly visited, especially for nocturne pictures of St. Stephan tower, which hosts the well-known horologe Big-Ben; of the Congress Palace and of the two towers of the Westminster Abbey, all reflected in a fairy-like light and out of the ordinary in the same time, due to the hue of yellow and green. This tower, as simple as it looks, has been around for almost 150 years.

Waterloo

The Waterloo Bridge, a grandiose construction believed to offer one of the most beautiful views of London, was designed by Lord Giles Gilbert Scott .It was made from reinforced concrete and stone, with women as workers, during the last world war (well…hopefully last world war). Crossing Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, Waterloo Bridge is a road and a foot traffic bridge. Its name is given in the memory of the Waterloo Battle where the British won the victory in 1815.

Don’t miss the splendid view offered by the position of this bridge!You can see in a unique panorama the Wesminster, London Eye to the west and the Canary Wharf as well as the City of London in the est.

Blackfriars

Has the name of a XIII - century monastery, but it belongs to the XIX century, more exactly to the year 1869, when it was laid between the two sides of Thames. This bridge offers a gorgeous view of the Saint Paul Cathedral and of the old centre of London; on the left of the river as well as on the right, you rediscover the Shakespearian Globe Theatre. This right side displays, just as within a parade, dozens of monuments, connected with the world of theatre, of the movie, of big shows, and unnumbered large manifestations.

London Bridge

The history of this bridge goes back in time to the era of the roman invasion, from the first decades after Christ, when the capital city of England was named “Londinium”.

No later than 1179, King Henry the 2nd ordered the building of a new bridge, having at the half a chapel dedicated to the one that was Saint Thomas Beckett. It is known that the traitors’ heads were exposed at the extremities of this bridge in those dark times. Compared to other bridges in London, the London Bridge of today offers the largest traffic capacity.

Tower Bridge

As its name says, Tower Bridge belongs, symbolically to the well-known Tower of London, situated near by. Tower Bridge is an emblem for London, with its two twin towers and the two mobile components between them. The mobile parts of 1000 tones each can rise in only 90 seconds, with the help of a super machine.

Built between 1886 and 1894, Tower Bridge became a tourist attraction in no time due to its spectacular galleries, where the history of its building and the ingenuity of its machines is revealed. It is worth mentioning the fact that Tower bridge also offers an extraordinary view of Thames.

Discover the charm and distinctiveness of the London bridges!

By Claudia Miclaus

Concentrated on a rather small territory, Holland is a place where you can see a lot! The beautiful tulips, windmills and so many peaceful landscapes simply conquer your heart. Get ready to fall in love with its people and why not, with the orange color!

Dutch windmills

Famous for its windmills and the lovely tulips spread on its plains, Holland is a great country to visit and why not, live in! It is true that Holland is quite small and you can drive from the north to the south in about three hours, but there are plenty beautiful places to visit!

Spending a day captivated by the majestic beauty of one of the worlds finest flower fields in March to May is one of the most enchanting things you can offer yourself and the memories will last a lifetime.

The north of the country has those stunning hosts of flowers! Since 1950, the bulb growers have organized an annual international exhibition with millions of flowers: daffodils, tulips and hyacinths. That is sheer delight! Everyone should see that explosion of beauty, grace and color!

Every spring, the well-known Keukenhof Garden offers a cheerful banquet for your eyes! Around 80 acres of twisting paths, serene ponds, playful streams and thousands of flowers, many more then you can imagine! Keukenhof Garden also offers for admiration seven theme gardens, a corn mill, sculptures as well as a special path for children.

The Netherlands is strongly associated with windmills, it is so enjoyable and somehow nostalgic to see them turning so that is often times the first thing visitors evoke when describing this country. A windmill with a river passing by is the idyllic picture of Holland …

The Dutch needed the windmills since they used them to drain the land as well as for corn milling, saw milling and other industrial purposes; you know Holland has a whole province reclaimed from the sea, the province of Flevoland.

Starting back in time, 2000 years ago, the 12th province of Holland was coming to life, not from Germany or other neighbor of the country but form the sea, the North sea! Frisians, the Dutch ancestors have been struggling to reclaim land from the North Sea for more then 2000 years. The first dykes to hold back the water were named “terpen” and Frisians built them but in 1287 they failed and the country was flooded.

Zuiderzee (South Sea), a new bay came to life because of this flood, and since, the Dutch worked to push the water back into the North Sea by building dykes and creating polders. A polder represents any piece of land reclaimed from the water and they are kept dry by draining the land using canals and pumps; windmills have been used for this purpose since 1200.

Today the Dutch have their unique major project to reclaim land from the Zuiderzee, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

A 30.5 km (19 mile) long dyke called Afsluitdijk (the Barrier Dyke) was built, turning the Zuiderzee into the IJsselmeer, a freshwater lake.

It is indeed an amazing achievement as today, 27 percent of the Netherlands is actually below sea level and this very area is home to over 60 percent of the country’s population.

The Dutch themselves are very friendly and open people. Their craziest day of the year is Koninginnedag or Queen’s Day. On April 30, this annual festivity commemorates the Queen Mother’s birthday.

Everyone wears orange! This is the color of the royal house so this is a must on Queen’s day! Willem van Oranje (William of Orange) is the one the roots of the orange color come from and they go back to the House of Oranje-Nassau.

There is so much joy and street parties, it is a moment when friends and neighbors gather and have a good time over some nice traditional food.

The trading laws vanish for this day and anyone can sell whatever they want on the street so the whole place becomes the craziest flea market! Music pumping out of sound systems and funniest representations, camel tours for children, all kinds of the yummiest sweets and basically all you can imagine to entertain everyone.

Many people who want a boat party on Amsterdam’s channels come to spend the day in the most colorful city of the country…or should I say of the world?!

Every Dutch is proud to wear orange this day more then any other day, vivid and representative, orange and Holland both express the strong will to live trough life threatening hardships.

By <a href=”http://www.buzzle.com/authors.asp?author=8577″>Claudia Miclaus</a>

Did you know that the first country who organized sports at a national level is Britain? Although art might not have been their strongest point, they have things to be proud of nowadays.

Sports

Britain is known to be the first country to organize sport as national activity. In the second half of the nineteen century it organized an exported a number of games, notably football, rugby football, hockey, lawn tennis, golf and cricket. The initial purpose behind organized sports was to provide an outlet for youthful energies at public schools. It was generally believed to have character - building qualities for future leaders! However, it was not long before local businessmen began to organize football and other sports as recreational activity for their workforces. Football clubs quickly sprang up in towns and cities all over Britain, and football was rapidly taken into working-class culture. The Saturday afternoon match was an occasion which working - class men would attend, supporting their local team.

From the 1960’s, however, the character of football began to change. A fundamental reason was the financial one. As match attendances dropped, club sought external help from sponsorship and advertising. Commercial companies found this profitable. For example, Cornhill Insurance began to sponsor English ‘test’ cricket in 1980 at a cost of £4.5 million.

Beforehand only 2 per cent of the population had heard of Cornhill, while by 1985, 20 per cent had done so, Cornhill had almost doubled its turnover. The decline in spectators forced club managers to make their sporting events less occasions for local support and more displays of spectacular skill. Football clubs started buying and selling players.

Football had become big business, and immediately began to attract private investors. Multimillionaires and commercial enterprises soon took an interest and several bought control of particular clubs.

Over a century ago, the novelist Anthony Trollope listed the sports ‘essentially dear to the English nature’. These included hunting, shooting, rowing and horseracing. He was, of course, referring to the ‘gentleman class’, which through the public school established football, rugby and cricket as national games. A class dimension to sport persists. Because of the expense involved, hunting, rowing and horseracing have remained primarily upper-class pastimes. Golf is still to some extent financially segregated between exclusive private clubs and municipal facilities. Football remains essentially lower class, but with a growing middle-class following.

Sport remains one of the areas in which members of ethnic minorities have demonstrated their ability in a white dominated society, particularly in athletics, cricket and soccer. The black footballer, Paul Ince, has captained the English football team and the black sprinter, Lindford Christie, was the captain of the British men’s Olympic team in both 1992 and1996.

Arts

The British find discussion of their national artistic and intellectual life faintly embarrassing. As the great British art historian, Nikolaus Pevsner, himself a refugee immigrant, remarked over 30 years ago, ‘None of the other nations of Europe has so abject an inferiority complex about its own aesthetic capabilities as England.’

Nowadays, Britain has much to be proud of, though its artistic achievements are frequently better appreciated, and known, abroad than home.

As in fashion, the British seem to enjoy breaking the rules of the current modernist style, and this perhaps is what gives British art such originality. As one critic wrote recently, ‘British artists, who are currently enjoying the highest international standing, have been singularly unaffected by the much vaunted internationalism of the Modern Movement. English art is perhaps beginning to escape from insularity and provincialism though a rediscovery of its Englishness.’

Theater is a powerful instrument in education as well as art and culture. Another significant feature of British theater is a result of the intensive preparation and speed with which productions are staged and their short performance lifespan. Their intensity and freshness is not allowed to grow stale. Another important point, however, is the youthfulness of many of the best productions. Length of experience in Britain is not allowed to stand in the way of talent, and as a result, young people, some recently from drama school, perform many leading roles.

Since the 1960s Britain has achieved a special position in music. Britain remains at the forefront of pop music. At the start of the 1990’s, British pop music seemed to be rediscovering the spirit of the 1960’s. The new music marks a departure from the unrelaxed mood of the 1980’s, and is a declaration of freedom..

By Claudia Miclaus

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Where to visit in Rome, St. Peter’s Square is a good place to start.

Picture From Rome

There are literally thousands of websites, books, articles etc, on this Eternal City. I didn’t read any of them before I went. I wanted to soak up the atmosphere all by myself, and only then would I buy a tourist book to investigate further if I felt the need.

I’m so pleased I did it this way because I would have missed so much. Like the Sunday morning I visited St Peter’s Square (Piazza di San Pietro) and the Vatican. Looking up on arrival at the famous Piazza, I’m surrounded by 140 Saints peering down on me!

Looking around me I’m slowly being surrounded by thousands of people, there’s no rushing or pushing, Italians move quickly with style, it was just a quiet gathering coming together in one special place.

Then at the 11am on the dot, the Pope appears from his window of his apartment, the whole audience of about 50,000 people burst into song with the Vatican Hymn, a very emotional occasion, which I would have missed, had I have listened to previous visitors, who advised me not to visit on a Sunday as it would be too crowded!

If you’re going to take a break in Rome, and want to know the best place for real Italian food, i.e. what the Italians eat themselves, have a chat with the locals (shopkeepers are a great source of information and most can get by with our language, especially if you need feeding), or find a friendly receptionist at your hotel, they will direct you to a good Trattoria, where generally there’s no menus, wine comes in a decanter, and one of the chef’s will probably come to your table to get your order. But it’s much less informal than a ristorante and much cheaper, and the food is freshly cooked.

Another good tip is when you book in at your chosen hotel ask the receptionist if there are any free upgrades. You could end up with an Executive room at no extra cost! Not every hotel will do it, but it is possible if they’re available. Or ask for a reduction on an upgraded room, again, this absolutely fine, subject to availability. It really does pay to go early in the year or out of season. I first went in March and it was T-shirts all weekend.

Just a last word, if you are going to the Colosseum, it is best to join a group with a guide, you’ll learn so much more, and don’t hover near the Roman Centurions outside, they’ll beg you for a photo, then chase you round the Colosseum for payment!

By Lesley Jones

Northern Ireland is bounded on the north and northeast by the

Northern Ireland Landscape

North Channel, on the southeast by the Irish Sea and on the south and west by Ireland. The border with Ireland is 360 km long. The region’s coastline consists of wide, sandy beaches, broken by steep cliffs in the north, northeast and southeast. Near the northern most point of Northern Ireland is Giant’s Causeway, an unusual formation of basalt columns created by the cooling of an ancient lava flow. Rathlin Island and several smaller islands lie off the northern coast.

The different regions of Northern Ireland are frequently referred to by the names of the province’s six traditional Irish counties, even though they are no longer the units of local government. These are clockwise from the northeast Antrim, Down, Armagh, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Londonderry (Derry).

The region’s topography is often described as saucer shaped… A low lying central area is surrounded by the Antrim Mountains and Glens of Antrim to the north and northeast, the Mourne Mountains to the southeast, the uplands of south Armagh to the south, and the Sperrin Mountains to the northwest. A number of broad river valleys run from the central region to the sea. The highest mountain is Slieve Donard (852 m/2,795 ft), located at the eastern end of the Mourne Mountains in County Down.

Rivers and Lakes

Lough Neagh, in the center of Northern Ireland, is the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles, with an area of 396 sq km (153 sq mi). All the region’s counties border it except Fermanagh. Upper and Lower Lough Erne, in County Fermanagh, are the only other major freshwater lakes. Belfast Lough, Carlingford Lough, Strangford Lough, and Lough Foyle are the largest sea inlets. The major river of Northern Ireland is the Bann, which rises in the Mourne Mountains and flows northward through Lough Neagh to become a wide and navigable waterway to the sea. The Foyle flows north to the sea at the port city of Londonderry (Derry), forming the border with Ireland for part of its length. The Lagan flows northeast to the sea at Belfast.

Wild plant and animal life is similar to that found in the northern and western parts of Britain. Sedges, rushes, ferns and grasses are the principal plants and rhododendrons flourish in many areas. Winters are mild and there are no regular sharp frosts, so it is also possible to grow decorative shrubs such as fuchsia and exotic imports such as those of the genus Escallonia. Wild mammals are limited to small rodents of the woods and fields, such as rabbits and stoats. There are many species of small birds. Salmon and trout thrive in Northern Ireland’s rivers and lakes and the province is also known for a distinctive type of whitefish called the pollan, found in Lough Neagh and Upper and Lower Lough Erne.

Ireland is not rich in minerals. Small-scale coal mining has been pursued sporadically at Coalisland, in central Northern Ireland, and at Ballycastle in the north. Farmers and other rural people harvest peat for fuel, but very few deposits are broad or deep enough to justify commercial exploitation. Limestone and gravel are extensively quarried. Some 6 percent of Northern Ireland’s land area is forested, much of it planted in recent times.

Climate

Northern Ireland’s climate is temperate, with warm winters and cool summers. In January the average daily temperature is around 4°C (39°F), and in July it is about 15°C (59°F). Annual precipitation is about 1,100 mm (42 in), spread fairly evenly throughout the year. Spring is normally the driest season. Overcast skies are the norm: Average daily hours of clear skies range from less than two from November to January to around six in May and June. Northern Ireland tends to be breezy and gales are common in spring and fall.

Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland.

Almost half of the province’s population lives in the greater Belfast area. Founded on the sandy mouth of the Lagan River in 1613 by settlers from Britain, Belfast took its name from Beal Feirsde (Irish for “the mouth of the sandbank”). Belfast remained a small trading port until about 1800. It subsequently became a major industrial city, growing from about 20,000 people at the beginning of the 1800s to a peak of 443,671 in 1951. Northern Ireland’s second largest city, Londonderry (Derry), is much smaller. Derry (Irish Doire, for “place of the oaks”), a small community centered on a 6th-century abbey, was rebuilt by British settlers in 1613. Soon thereafter the town granted charters to several London merchant companies to develop the area, and the official name of the city became Londonderry. This name was never fully accepted or used by Catholics, who in general still refer to the city as Derry. The city is therefore often referred to in print as Londonderry/Derry or Derry/Londonderry. The only other urban center designated as a city is Armagh, which is actually a small town. Armagh owes its prominence to its historic role as the center of Christianity in Ireland and the home of both the Catholic and Anglican primates of all Ireland. Major towns include the market centers of Coleraine (headquarters of the University of Ulster), Dungannon, Enniskillen, Omagh and Strabane; the ports of Larne and Newry; and the historic linen manufacturing towns of Ballymena, Lurgan and Portadown.

Picture: Mourne Mountains seen from beach in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland
By Claudia Miclaus