Catching Up...the Isle of Man

This is not live blogging.


I mean, I am alive, and I am blogging but I'm not blogging at the scene of the action.  That's the difference between blogging live and catching up...just so you know.  


The first week of May I did a little two day side trip from London to the Isle of Man which is a little island between the UK and Ireland.  I've always wanted to go there because my great-great grandma Maggie was from the Isle of Man and I always have heard my grandma mention her grandma who was from the Isle of Man and I always thought it was cool that I have an ancestor from some random little island that most people have never heard of because all my other ancestors (as far as I know) were from boring old England and Scotland.


Maggie met her husband, who later became my great-great grandpa, on the ship when she left the Isle of Man for America a long time ago.  Meeting in transit...so romantic...or at least I've always thought so.  


Since I have always wanted to go to the Isle of Man I just figured I'd hop over while I was in London...by the way they have really cheap flights from London to the Isle of Man.  I think cheaper than doing the train/ferry combo...just so you know in case any of you read this post and decide that the Isle of Man is the next place you want to visit.  


Here are some fun facts about the Isle of Man, brought to you by Wikipedia and my brain:
*It is also called just Mann and people from there are called Manx.  
*They have really good BLTs there...maybe the best one I've ever had in my life...no offense MOM.  
*The Isle of Man has been inhabited since BEFORE 6500 BC, and that is a LONG time.  
*Mann is not part of the UK or the European Union...I'm still not sure it if is a country or a territory or what it is but they have their own government.  In fact, they have had a Parliament since AD 979 and the Parliament has met in the same place since then...pretty civilized, wouldn't you say?
*They have their own currency in the Isle of Man...they are Pounds but aren't the same Sterling British Pounds they use in England.  
*They have their own language there, which is Manx, but nobody really speaks it anymore except for really old people or people who are just dead set on maintaining their language...which is kind of dumb because why know a language that practically nobody else speaks?  Who are you going to talk to in Manx?...yourself?  Just wondering.  
*Currently about 80,000 people live on the Isle of Man.

This is the symbol for the Isle of Man.  You see it everywhere...on their flag, on packaging, on trains, etc.  And it is a symbol of perseverance or something like that because it is said of The Three Legs of Man, "Whichever way you throw it, it will stand."  


Oh, and check out the flowers in the picture...they had flowers all over the place on the Isle of Man.  So, maybe that is where I got my crazy love of flower gardening...I am part Manx you know.  

Down on the south part of the Island by Port Erin

Somewhere on the Isle of Man...they like sheep there and I like that they like sheep because I like sheep too.

Somewhere on the Isle of Man...I think I took this picture from the train which is why it isn't the greatest picture.  They have an old steam engine train that goes up and down the island...really fun but not so great for good pictures since the steam gets in the way.  

Isn't it beautiful there?  I kind of wish great-great grandma Maggie had just stayed right where she was but then I guess she never would have met my great-great grandpa and I wouldn't exist...or if I did, I guess I wouldn't be American and would probably have bad teeth...and I like my teeth.

Anybody recognize this house?

YOU'RE RIGHT...it is Ned Devine's house.  Finding out that the movie Waking Ned Devine was filmed in the Isle of Man made me love the Isle of Man and Waking Ned Devine even more than I already do.  

The view down by Ned's house.

Another view near Ned's.

This is the church and old cemetery in Onchan, the town where my great-great grandma Maggie was from.  She isn't buried there, obviously, since she immigrated to America, but maybe some other relatives are...I didn't look through the whole cemetery to find out...there were a lot of headstones there and the old ones were kind of hard to read.  

However, do you see that big orb in the bottom right part of the picture?...Well, according to Ghost Hunters International, that is one of my ancestors trying to tell me something...or maybe they just wanted to be in my picture.  That orb showed up in all the pictures I took in the cemetery but didn't show up in any of my other pictures...freaky/cool, huh?

One of the ONLY bad things about the Isle of Man is that it seems like everyone is old there...at least when you are outside of the capital city, Douglas...and it isn't bad that people are old there because I like old people and the fact that there are lots of old people probably means that it is a good place to live and that you live long there, BUT, when you are a single traveler trying to find someone to take a picture of you and there are only older people around who might have a tough time operating a digital SLR, you don't get a lot of good shots of yourself.  

Hence...self shots.  But I don't have long enough arms (hence the shot of me and the ground) and then in the pictures when I'm really stretching to try to make my arms longer then I end up making a weird face. 

And then when you do get a picture of yourself taken successfully sometimes your jacket covers half of your face and you don't fix it because you are concentrating so much on just taking the picture.  Finding someone to take a picture of you is definitely a problem when traveling solo on the Isle of Man.

They also have some pretty cool old castles on the Isle of Man.

Overall, I'd give the island five stars...it is beautiful, the people are nice, they make really good BLTs, they have lots of flowers, castles, the ocean, great offshore banking, and much, much more.

Oh, and if you go, stop by the Manx museum in Douglas...it was FREE (and usually NOTHING IS FREE IN EUROPE including bathrooms and water) and it was a really great museum.  

Oh, and you need a lot more time than 2 days (I really had more like one and a half taking out travel time) to spend in Mann...just because it is a small island doesn't mean there's not a lot to do.  I will definitely have to go back.  It looks like the type of place you would want to go to relax, to hike, to ride bikes, etc. 

Oh...and, it is SO pretty there...I don't really feel that my pictures captured the full beauty of the place and I didn't take the greatest pictures or very many of them...but just know...it is like as pretty as my pictures times ten and I hope you all go there someday and experience it for yourselves...even if you aren't lucky enough to be part Manx, like me.

So two thumbs up for the Isle of Man!