Even long after my first impressions of Armagh, I find it to be a lovely place. Better than Belfast, better than Dublin, Armagh is quaint and perfectly reflects the “small town” definition. One of my favorite video games is Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask, where game play goes over three days and the townsfolk complete theor own sequence of story over those three days. I have been walking around Armagh quite a bit, visiting different shops and seeing some of the same people on all environments. Armagh is the first real small town I have spent a significant amount of time in on my own. I am fascinated. It’s not a video game, but I am able to see the lives of people over the week, for better than I can in a city like baltimore with lots of visiting tourists and the like. I have been contemplating the thought of moving to Armagh in a few years, or some place similar. The idea of being able to spend a week in the glens of Antrim is very enticing, and those towns are even smaller still. I have been down almost every street of Armagh proper and a few random neighborhoods, seeing the various treasures tucked into the smallest niches of the town. I won’t be able to look at cities like Baltimore again, as I will always be trying to relive what I achieved here in Armagh: the microcosm of culture and personal experience played out by the citizens I have grown to know well.

P.s. Derry is a lovely city; I think the program should spend a week there during the trip. There is tons of history regarding the troubles and the siege of 1689.