Final Days - 7 and 8, Boyne, Trim and Dublin

Sorry for the delay in these updates! The iPad decided it needed a vacation as well, and stayed in Trim after we left. Luckily for me, it hitched a ride into Dublin with a friendly traveler and I picked it up before we got to the airport on Sunday morning.

In the meantime, I couldn't upload pictures and blog posts. Well, I could have done posts, but they would have been pictureless as I couldn't offload the ones from the camera!

Anyway.

We spent Friday in the Valley of the Boyne, a river north of Dublin. In the morning we left Trim and headed to Bru Na Boine, where we visited the 6000 year old "passage tombs" of Newgrange and Knowth. We put our name in the drawing to be one of the 50 people allowed into Newgrange for the winter soltice (Newgrange is lined up so that light shines down the passageway on 5 days out of the year, the winter solstice). Pretty impressive for 6000 years old!








That took a bit longer than we expected, as did getting slightly lost trying to get to a ruined monastery in the area (Monasterboice) where some of the biggest and most well-preserved Celtic crosses stand. From there we went back to Trim to tour the castle, built in about 1180 and at the time the second largest castle in Europe. FYI various angles of the castle were filmed to create the various castles in Braveheart.








We drove from Trim to Dublin and dropped off the car, took a taxi to the hotel, and then out to the city. We walked around a bit, through Temple Bar, a semi-pedestrian shopping/bar/restaurant area in town. Sleep was fitful...our hotel, while nice, bordered the street and there were drunken Irishmen (and women) outside all night.


Saturday we toured Dublin. Things opened fairly late, so we got a bit of wandering done prior to a historic walking tour of the city. After lunch, we took the "hop on hop off" bus to Kilmainheim(?) Gaol (jail). We thought that might be a nice way to see the city, and we did a little, but it was more waiting and poor visibility viewing than we expected.








The jail was interesting...it operated for about 200 years, and held both the political prisoners of the 1916 uprising as well as those from the Irish Civil War following the War of Independence.






Saturday night we sat with some Irish musicians and listened to music, talked about musical history, learned to play a flute-like instrument, and had a few pints.


Sunday saw an uneventful trip the airport (including a stop to get the iPad) and flights home.