Day 33, July 31, 2012

I'm finally getting caught up with the blog. I'm actually writing about present day events. We left the guesthouse this morning for some historical sites north of Dublin, the first one being the Hill of Tara.

The Hill of Tara is one of the most sacred sites in Irish history. It's been in use for the past 5,000 years and has been visited by Irish kings for centuries for ceremonial purposes. There is a stone on one of the mounds that  is said to have the power to acknowledge the person who is to be the next king of Ireland.

The only problem with our visit to the Hill of Tara was the weather. I commented to the receptionist in the visitor's center that our visit was great except for the howling wind and the pelting rain. We had fun anyway and had a good group picture with our umbrellas in various stages of disarray.

Next, we headed off to the town of Trim. Trim was founded by a Christian priest in the sixth century. Abour five hundred years later, the Normans built a castle known as Trim Castle. You might recognize it as it was the site for the fiming of the movie, Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson. The filmmakers were working on location for six months in 1994. They modified the castle for the movie then removed all the modifications once the filming was done.

We ended up spending about four hours in Trim. We had an excellent tour of the castle which took close to an hour. We did quite a bit of walking around, just taking in the history and beauty of the area.

When we left Trim, we decided to head to the monastic site, Monasterboice, which has three of the largest high crosses in Ireland. One of the crosses, the tallest in the country, is eighteen feet tall. It was carved from stone in the tenth century A.D. and had many Christian themes in the carvings on the cross.

We drove back to Dublin and picked up our laundry which we had done for us while we traveled. After dinner at a nearby restaurant, we headed back to our rooms where I know that some of us watched the Olympics. It was great to see the U.S. women's gymanistics team win the team gold medal and the men's 4 by 200 freestyle relay also win the gold. It was a good night for team USA.