Isle of Man

I have never been to the Isle of Man.  I’m heading across the pond tomorrow!

My mother-in-law is from the Isle of Man, so I am part of her family that is going over to the Isle of Man to give her one more visit.  She is 82 and except for the Alzheimer’s, she is reasonable healthy.

We leave tomorrow and everything is pretty much ready except for the packing, which shouldn’t take long.  Our house sitter / cat sitter even came by for the key yesterday, so all is under control.

I was planning to take my laptop to do a bit of work while I was away, but my boss talked me into just having a nice vacation from our day-to-day stuff, so I should be truly rested when I return.

So here’s the plan:  the eight of us fly into Dublin, where we will spend a day to try to get used to being five hours ahead of our regular time, then we take the two and a half hour ferry to the Isle of Man, where we will stay and tour for five days then we ferry back to Dublin for three days of some sightseeing there, then, of course we are back to Canada and reality.  Sounds like fun!  I’m really looking forward to it!

So, just a little history lesson:  The island's parliament, Tynwald, has been in continuous existence since 979 AD or earlier, making it the oldest continuously governing body in the world.^[32] Tynwald is a bicameral or tricameral legislature, comprising the House of Keys (directly elected by universal suffrage) and the Legislative Council (consisting of indirectly elected and ex-officio members). These two bodies meet together in joint session as Tynwald. (taken from Wikipedia!).  Interestingly enough, the Canadian parliament is based on this government, which has been in continuous existence for over 1,000 years!  Pretty amazing!

This should be a great trip, and likely means that I won’t be doing my weekly blog next weekend, but stay tuned for the following week, when I should have some fun stuff to say about the trip!