The Queen and I: Dublin Day 3 - More Really Old Things

Mom had signed us up for a tour of ancient tombs. Monday Morning, we had breakfast at the hotel again and caught our bus tour at O’Connell Street.

The guide was an archeologist, but on the bus he gave us an interesting history lesson.

First we went to the Hill of Tara. It’s basically an ancient palace where the grass had grown over most of it so you could only see the bumps in the ground.

There was a rock which chariots would pass when a new king was inaugurated the wheel would rub against the rock and the legend is that if it was the rightful king the wheel would screech. This is because the crown was not passed directly to the first born sun, but rather to the person who conquered, killed, and spread his power the most. The guide said that the sons and brothers of the king would often mutilate each other because a man could not be king is he was deformed.

It was interesting, but also annoying because they let animals roam over the grass so there was animal poop EVERYWHERE. I’m not exaggerating. You could not take a step without hitting it. You just had to pray it was small and not mushy that would stick to your feet.

We left the Hill of Tara and took the bus to an Irish farm. There we had a lunch from the farm. I had an egg sandwich. Mom had soup. Dad had soup and apple pie with cream from the farm. After lunch, we had a few minutes to look around the farm.

Then we took the bus to a visitor’s center. We were going to see Newgrange tomb, which was one of three ancient tombs. It is 5000 years old. It’s a passage tomb, meaning that there is a passage to a wider room. The passage is about 40 feet, but it is very tight and ‘S’ shaped. The ceiling in the passage is about 5 feet, so I was bending down the whole time. The passage is built perfectly so that on the Winter solstice, the sun shines through an opening above the entrance and hits the ground and goes all the way down the passage. It used to go to the very end of the tomb, but because of the wobble in the Earth, it now goes all the way to about a foot from the wall. They used a light to simulate this. There is a raffle to be able to be in the tomb on the solstice, but the guide says that cloudy weather often ruins it.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the tomb, but it was probably the coolest thing we did in Ireland. It is older than the Egyptian pyramids and it is massive. Since the tomb was excavated in the 1800s and then left unregulated and open for 100 years, all the artifacts were taken. Also, there was some 100 year old graffiti. I saw people’s names with the year 1898 written next to them and the guide said there is even more.

On the bus ride back to Dublin, I fell asleep. When we got off the bus, Mom bought a hair straightener because her electric converter wasn’t working and Dad and I only brought adapters because our electronics have converters built in. She had been very unhappy about her hair for a couple of days.

Then we ate at a restaurant that was inside an old church. Mom had read about it in her Rick Steve’s book. She had pasta and I had another steak sandwich. I don’t remember what dad had.

We went to sleep early because we had to wake up at 5 am to go to the airport for our flight to Paris.