A Castle and a Spectacular Grave

Now I dont want to scare my family out there, but driving in Ireland, particularly in Dublin, is a little like taking your life in your hands. Of course they drive on the left, which is extremely confusing to us who drive the "right" way (imagine turning right and going way across the road), and the roads tend to be very narrow. In an old city like Dublin, where roads just simply sprawled out as the city grew, and some roads change name several times in a mile, it is hard to describe how difficult it can be to navigate! Oh and there are no typical road signs like in the U.S.-the street names are on tiny signs on the sides of buildings at intersections! But we really wanted a car to be able to explore the gorgeous countryside when Ruben was off, so we got a GPS and thought we would be good. Until we realized the GPS was crazy! After taking us down alleyways, into parking garages and down a pedestrian ONLY street (Busy shopping street Grafton-I was trying to blend in with the car seats for those humiliating minutes), we exchanged our GPS for a more up to date model and headed out into the countryside for a much easier driving experience. We first came to a few seaside towns north of Dublin. They were quaint and comfy, although probably chilly in the winter with cool ocean breezes. We visited Trim Castle, the largest Norman castle in Ireland. Much of the movie Bravehart was filmed there-they used the outside as one castle and the inside as another. Lastly we saw the Newgrange passage tomb at Bru na Boinne. An ancient culture built it and others like it about 5,000 years ago. The tombs are older than the pyramids at Giza! Nothing is known about the builders except that they must have been intelligent, resourceful and hard-working to build these structures. They used huge stones they quarried from miles away (using the log rolling system) and the project took 2-3 generations. And they didn't have metal tools yet! They would place the cremated remains of people in a special inner chamber, supposedly to help them get to an afterlife. It was kinda late when we got back to town so a quick dinner at the London-fav noodle restaurant Wagamama capped off our night. Ruben has work tomorrow...