RJ Visits the Castle

Today we took RJ out to see Trim Castle. This castle was featured in the movie Braveheart. You might remember it from the scenes where William Wallace, played by Mel Gibson, gets hung drawn and quartered by the English. What we found was that a 3-story castle presented little room for RJ to (safely) run around. Did I mention that RJ loves to run? He loves to run. He needed his "Freedom!" (the quote is to be read with a bad Mel Gibson Scottish accent).

Since I had been on the tour before, I let Beth continue on the tour and I exited with RJ before we even got off the first level of the castle. RJ had plenty of fun running around the castle grounds. As I have probably mentioned before, RJ likes to run down hills more than he likes to run up hills. Thus we ended up spending most of our time on the river-side of the castle as opposed to the curtain wall side of the castle.


We ended the day with Spaghetti Night in Navan. As you can see, RJ likes spaghetti. He even finds that it's in fashion to wear his spaghetti.

The Hill of Slane

Just west of Newgrainge, is the town of Slane. Slane sits on the River Boyne and is overlooked by the Hill of Slane. The significance of the Hill of Slane is that it is said that in 433 A.D., St. Patrick lit the paschal fire on this hill in defiance of the pagan kings that ruled at the time. As you can see here, St. Patrick is still up to his charitable ways, holding on to a hat for a young lassie who lost it.

There are some wonderful views from the Hill of Slane. You can see East all the way to Drogheda and the Irish Sea. Best of all its free! This is a highly recommended stop if you're in the area.

Newgrainge - Bru na Boinne

After my Dun Laoghaire post, I decided to take things one topic at a time. I had a hard time getting all the pictures together into one post. So here is some information about one of the more popular attractions people go to see when they're in or around Dublin. That attraction is the burial mound at Newgrainge.

Newgrainge is about an hour drive north of Dublin (just west of Drogheda). When you get to to Newgrainge, you enter the Bru na Boinne Visitor Center. You buy your tickets to the burial mound and commence waiting. When I went there was a wait of over an hour to get on the bus. However, the Visitor Center is well put together, so you have plenty to do while you're waiting. It has a short film about the site, a recreation of the inside of the site, information about the people who built the mound, information about the archaeologist who reconstructed the sit, and information on the iconic art that decorates the kerbstones and tomb.

Here's the short of it. The tomb was built over 5000 years ago. It dates back to about 3000 B.C. It wasreconstructed (circa 1962-1975) to what an archaeologist believed was its ancient splendor. They called it a tomb because the found charred human remains inside though no actual charring of the stones. Thus it is believed that the cremation occurred outside of the mound before they were laid to rest inside.

The real glory of the tomb is that it is perfectly aligned to the winter solstice. On the morning of the winter solstice, the sunlight shines in for a whopping seventeen minutes - if the sun happens to be shining in Ireland that day. While your there you get a recreation of that effect, but it's hard to see the beam of light on the floor because the tomb is packed with 24 tourists. It's kind of anticlimactic. If you plan on going during the winter solstice, think again. There's a lottery to get into the tomb on those days.

However, the price is good at 6 Euros for the whole experience. I recommend it if you're in the area. Here are a couple more pictures: