Jewels of Ireland Video – 2 weeks in 2 hours

As I told my Papa, “You don’t have to look at it all at once!”.

Yes, it’s 2 hours long. Feast your eyes on beauty, bite-sized, if that’s what serves you best or enjoy the whirlwind tour of Ireland in one sitting. Your choice!

Just remember to use the gear wheel at the bottom to watch it in HD instead of SD for better quality.

I was blessed to finally travel to Ireland in May of 2022 for a 2-week CIE International coach tour of Ireland (Republic of Ireland & Northern Ireland).

I say “finally” because I’d purchased this trip over 2.5 years ago and wasn’t able to get a refund when the pandemic hit.

Originally, this was going to be the touristy ending of a 2-month trip. The first 6 weeks would have been spent in 3 different spiritual retreat centres for a solo self-directed spiritual/artistic retreat experience.

If you recall, back in 2019, I’d created the painting “The Gateway” as the last piece in my Re-Connect to your True Self series.  I’d then received Guidance that there would be a need for isolation before the rebirthing of the world.

The mistake I made was to take this message personally. I’d thought it was a need for me to isolate to tune in and rebirth my world.

So I’d planned 1.5-months of isolation in an Irish Buddhist retreat Centre, a Catholic god-pod on monastery grounds and a hermitage in the Wicklow Mountains.

Months before my trip, the pandemic hit … plenty of isolation for all and yes, the beginning of a planetary re-birthing.

I’m not sure I would have booked an overseas trip this year had I been able to get a refund or received guidance to re-sell the tour.

Every time I checked in, however, it was “Go!”. So I did and no regrets.

I may return one day for the more introspective spiritual experience I’d envisaged, but am thoroughly grateful for this touristy break in my routine.

With 1 other Canadian and 22 Americans, I got to see & experience a great variety of natural & man-made sites – all of which you’ll see through my eyes in the video above.

I’d often wake up hours before breakfast to go walking or playing with my 2 iPhone cameras.

But after our long dinners together, I was always ready for bed.

It’s amazing how traveling further from my family (who all live in a different province than me – or different plane for my Maman) actually brought us closer during this trip.

Part of my attraction to Ireland was that some of my ancestors on the Hurley side come from there.

My Papa was never far from my thoughts during my trip as I learned more about the history and geography of this fatherland.

I connected with my brother and his wife, knowing they’d traveled there before me, actually finding the tiny “Hurley Bridge” where research had identified our bloodline’s last homestead before emigration.

Both my father & brother also came to mind at the Foynes aviation museum. They’re big into planes…

And my sister was with me as I visited & connected to her at each sacred site & healing well.

As for my beloved Maman, this trip had been paid for with some of the inheritance money I’d received from her estate. She was close in every moment of gratitude – and there were so many!

I may have been traveling solo, but I was never truly alone away from the tour group. Along with my Team of Divine Helpers, my family were sharing in the journey.

Every day, I took hundreds, even thousands of videos and photos of the beauty I beheld.

To avoid overwhelm upon my return, I spent time editing and deleting files every evening before sleep.

My intention had been to stay off social media during my holiday.

But right before I left, Apple added a feature to its iMovie app on my iPhone 13 pro max. It’s called Magic Movie. It automatically curates a video using all the photos and videos you select, adding transitions and royalty-free music.

The amazing thing is that it takes about 2 minutes instead of the usual 2-5 hours it would have taken me to do it manually in iMovie.

So I took advantage of this new feature to create & post 32 mini-movies on Facebook during my trip.

Unfortunately, this new program had 1 major disadvantage. No matter the order in which you select the media, it starts with the newest first, ruining the chronological order of events.

This didn’t matter much for some, but did in others. I’d sometimes spend time making some manual fixes, but it was still a whole lot less time than the manual way.

It was a great exercise in letting go of perfection for the sake of sharing my experiences.

Another disadvantage is that Magic Movie sometimes cropped my photographs in a way I certainly wouldn’t have and didn’t give the option to request full frame. So I left some as is and deleted others.

The advantages of this speedy automation far outweighed the disadvantages. I only used the lengthy manual way for 3 of my mini-movies, I believe.

The day after I got back, as a way to review my trip, I spent 8 hours putting these 32 mini-movies together with scenes from the coach window & quick photo stops in between.

And that’s what I’m offering you now – a chance to experience 2 weeks around Ireland in 2 hours in this Jewels of Ireland video. Enjoy!

And if you want to spend more time contemplating the photography, feel free to visit my album on Flickr.