As soon as I hit “publish” on my last post, I heard what I thought was live music. I finished my coffee and went to where the crowd was gathering. Sure enough, a three-person Irish band and dancers were performing what I now know the Irish call, Trad.
I have a video of the dancers too, who were amazing but the file is too big right now to load it to the site.
Once my troops were gathered, we headed to pick up the rental car. Steve quickly got used to driving on the right side of the vehicle, and the left side of the road. We were off to Newgrage, which is north of Dublin.
If you want to learn a little bit about it, here’s a great website. But, of course, the pictures and description don’t do it justice. Newgrange is a sacred tomb and dates back 5,000 years (before Stonehenge). There are three such structures nearby, but Newgrange is the most visited.
As you can see, we dodged the rain while we were here and the sky was beautiful and sunny. The wind, however, was another story.
The rock carvings in the limestone are incredible. There are concentric circles, diamonds, triangles, and similar shapes. There are many, of these types of structure around Europe and Africa with similar markings but, so far, Newgrange is the only one that has three interlocking spiral circles.
The the most amazing part was that we were able to enter the tomb. No pictures though… The passageways were narrow and there were carvings throughout. Once you got in, there was a domed ceiling made out of nothing but stones. In the 5,000 years it has been standing, never has a drop of water fallen in. And, as our guide John joked, “That’s saying something in Ireland.”
During the winter solstices and at sunrise, for three days sunlight moves through the tomb. They recreated it while we were inside. I can only imagine the spectacle it is when it’s actual sunlight.
The walk back to the bus was beautiful too.
This tour took much longer than expected, although everyone agreed it was worth it. We scrapped our visit to the Hill of Tara and jumped back into the car to make the three-hour drive to Galway.
No one slept or ate much on the plane so about 2 hours in, we decided we needed to stop to eat. We ended up in Athlone in County Westmeath right on the river Shannon. The restaurant we picked was delicious, and it was a great first dining experience.
About 4:30 we made it to The House Hotel in Galway, which we will be calling home for the next two nights. By the time we got here, it was raining. That was fine with us as we just wanted to crash. I slept until 10:00 and learned that Steve and Audrey had ventured out to grab a slice of pizza and a Guinness (just Steve).
The plan was to take a double-decker bus tour of Galway at 3:00 today, but we missed it. So, we’ll see what tomorrow brings. We may stay and discover the city a bit more, or we may venture out to the surrounding areas.
Hope all is well in the US. We can mark day one in Ireland as a grand success!