The first day we got to Dublin and drove around a little before walking to a pub and having a Guinness. It's true what they say - Guinness in Ireland is completely different from US Guinness. I'm not much of a Guinness fan stateside, but it is delicious in Ireland. I had some Donegal Lamb Pie that first night too, and by the way, they are as delicious to eat as they are to knit with. We were pretty exhausted and turned in early-ish, but not too early - have to beat the time change!
The next day we started by going to the Boynne Valley. You pull up to a little Visitor Center and then take a little bus to Newgrange, Nowth, or Dowth, which are all sites of Passage Tombs. We went to Newgrange. Passage Tombs are pretty cool. Here are my two favorite boys walking down to the visitor center.
They might not even really be tombs, but they obviously had some kind of cerimonial purpose for the pre-Celts and people think that whoever they were, they worshiped the sun. The tombs are some of the oldest surviving man-made structures on Earth - 500 years older than the pyramids. When the Celts got here they thought the tombs were the entrances to Faerie and left the places assiduously alone. The Irish name Bru na Boinne, means, "The Otherworld at Boynne." (I was extremely happy about all of the Irish on road signs and waysides and museums. Everything has to be written in Irish too, and police and lawyers all have to speak fluent Irish because you have the right to demand your trial take place in Irish!)
The only entrance to Newgrange is a narrow, somewhat winding tunnel that slopes just slightly upward. Over the door on the outside is a little window box, which is exactly level with the floor in the center of the mound. On the morning of the winter solstice, the window box precisely lines up with the sun rising over the mountains on the other side of the valley, and the light creeps up the passage and touches the center of the room. Nowth and Dowth are lined up for the Equinoxes.
We were pretty near Drogheda, by the by, (I took a picture of the map) but didn't make it to the home of the Clarys. Father du Bricassard is a jackass, by the way. Also, it's not pronounced Dro-gee-da, it's DhroHEDa. So there.
Anyway, after Newgrange we went to Malahide Castle, which was really fun, and our first experience with the cafeterias in all of the historic places over there. NPS take note - I bet they make mad profit with their good variety of hot food in all of the parks.
I was extremely excited that the castle had a doorbell.
Malahide was cool, but the best part was the garden in the backyard. The family retired to Tasmania awhile ago, but spent most of the 20th century making a beautiful garden with specimens from all over the world. If you know my family, you know one of our favorite things to do is to wander around gardens and say, "What do you think this is? It looks like a . . . but I've never seen one this shape before . . . see if there's a sign . . ." We amuse ourselves.
My brother and sister and I also reenacted an old photo from our past. Of course, in that photo, we can reach all the way around the tree. (And we're like, 11, 9, and 8.)
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