June 5th
We only scheduled a few days in Ireland, which was a bit unfortunate. Plus, we were very tired by this part of the trip, so we only hit a few sights.
The first day we flew from Newcastle to Dublin, hired a car, and set out for the west coast. When we told people we were going all the way west, they expressed amazement we'd drive that far in a day. But really, it was only about 5 hours, mostly on highways. (although still on the wrong side of the road! but Judy was almost getting used to it by now.) We drove to the town of Kenmare, close to the Kerry peninsula. We planned to drive the Ring of Kerry the next day, but alas, the good weather deserted us and we woke up to a pounding rain and heavy clouds. So, we only made one stop along the road, at a "ring fort". This one was at Staigue. According to Rick Steves's guidebook: The circular drystone walls were built sometime between 500 BC and AD 300 without the aid of mortar or cement. About 80 feet across, with wall 12 feet thick at the base and up to 25 fee high, these structures would have taken 100 men six months to complete.
Back in Kenmare, we found a great pub with live music and a great dinner, especially the seafood chowder.
We left Kenmare on Saturday the 7th, and drove back to the east coast. We stopped at Cashel for lunch along the way, which had a ruined abbey and a famous castle.
We spent the afternoon just north of Dublin, visiting the world heritage site called Bru na Boinne, or Newgrange and Knowth for those of us who don't speak Irish.
These are two 5000 year old passage tombs, massive grass covered burial mounds, with a chamber inside reached by a narrow stone passage. We arrived just in time to jump aboard the bus to the first one, at Knowth. There is the one large mound surrounded by smaller mounds. These were used as graves in about 3200 BC, and successive forts and towns were built atop them in later waves of settlement. This area was excavated by archaeologists in the 1960's.
This is the second great mound, called Newgrange, which is about 500 years older than the pyramids. This one allows visitors to go inside with a guide in small groups to witness a demonstration of how the winter solstice sun lights up the main chamber for about 17 minutes.
The next day we went to Dublin, and toured the excellent National Museum of Archaeology. This picture looks like it's outside, but it's a replica of a doorway inside the museum.
We took a hop on, hop off bus tour around the town.
This was a favorite jumping off spot for many tourists...the Guiness brewery but Harris would rather spend the admission money on the actual product (and he did).
We happened to talk to a policeman outside this building, which was next door to the Museum of Archaeology. It is the parliament building, and after giving our identifications to the guards, we were given a tour of the place by a very patriotic Irishman .
We also visited Trinity College, where the Book of Kells is housed...another elaborately decorated set of gospels. No pictures were allowed there!
We flew to Newark, NJ on the 10th, visited with Tasha and Ewan, and then drove to Boston to see Keith and Theresa on the 12th. Then we all met up on Saturday with Kyle, Serenity, Reliance and River back in New Jersey...and then we finally came home on the 16th. The trip was wonderful. And so was sleeping in our own bed that night.
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