Day Three (continued)

Unfortunately, as we were touring Knowth, my migraine started to come back (I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say that I had a lot of migraines during this trip). I needed water to take my pills, so when we left Knowth we headed back inside the main bilding ti the cafeteria and we got lunch. Strangely enought, when we were waiting in line to get food, we noticed that the cafeteria menu was provided by Bewley's, which was where we had eaten breakfast that morning. Anyway, we sat down to eat lunch and then headed back down to catch the bus to Newgrange.

Newgrange is a 5000 year-old burial mound that has been preserved from a single drop of water damage by an ingenious architectural design. It also served as a ritualistic solar observatory as the entrance hall leads directly to the burial site, and is facing exactly in such a way that for 15 minutes on the winter solstice, the whole interior chamber can light up with natural light. The tour guide gave us an artificial demonstration of this by turning off all of the lights inside until it was pitch black, and then turning on a very strong bulb to try to mimic the sun shining through the entryway. The effect was pretty cool.

But what was even cooler was that when I turned around inside, on the stones behind me was carved graffiti from the 1800s when the mound had been raided for treasure. It's so cool to be able to look at something that is well-preserved enough to be clearly legible, yet says "Joe Murphy, 1872." Unfortunately, we also weren't allowed to take pictures in this place, but Jon took one of Jean as she was exiting anyway.

We left after being allowed to explore the exterior on our own for awhile. Evan got this pretty sweet picture of the entrance stone.

The van/bus ride back to Dublin seemed shorter than the ride to Newgrange- possibly because the driver had the aful music turned down. We were dropped off somewhere near Dublin central. I had a hard time walking back because of my hip, but I dealt with it. We meandered around in the direction of the hotel for awhile. I saw a converse store along the way and had to go in. I tried on an awesome pair of red sparkly ones that could have made for a great Dorothy outfit. Unfortunately, they didn't have my size.

We headed back to the hotel, and Jon decided that we should have dinner at an Indian restaurant around the corner. They asked me if I wanted to come or lay down at the hotel, but I was a little hungry and I didn't want to fall asleep so early, and it's better to be with people than alone in a strange hotel room if you're going to be awake and you aren't feeling well. So, we went to the Indian Ocean restaurant. I ordered chicken curry, but by the time it arrived I had become so nauseous from the migraine that I couldn't eat. Jean packed up my food and hers, and we headed back to the hotel so that I could sleep.

I don't know how long I was out, but it was long enough for Jon to raid all of my bags and take an inventory of my medications. Then he went into doctor mode and started asking me all of these questions about my prescriptions. I waited for about an hour and a half before I finally threw up and then I felt better. Shortly thereafter, I fell asleep.

Day Three (8/9/09)

Despite Jon's precautions, I woke up in the middle of the night. With a migraine still. So I took another Maxalt and went back to sleep. When I woke up again, it was gone. So that was nice. We actually didn't wake up until about 10:30, so that was plenty of sleep.

We went to get breakfast at a place called Bewley's on Grafton Street. I had a croissont and yogurt with fruit- quickly- before we had to catch a bus at the tourist info center to Newgrange, which was supposed to be some cool, ancient location that could rival Stonehenge. The little van/bus thing that took us over there was painted all black and had "Mystery Tour" on the side of it, and there was confusion as to whether we and some of the other tourists were supposed to get on an acceptably professional looking van/bus or this one, but we all ended up on this little 14-seater. As we got going, the heavily-accented driver put on some extremely loud music pertaining to how the fair city of Dublin wasn't like it used to be... and it was round about then that I started thinking we were all going to die on that van/bus.

 Mystery Tour? It seemed to me that a perfectly plausible scenario was that the driver was an anti-foreign Irish radical who had a van/bus the same as the others, but painted black, who would pick up confused tourists at the visitor's center ("Newgrange? Oh, yes of course. This is the bus to Newgrange"), drive them off to someplace inconspicuous, all the while playing lamenting Irish music before he brought them to his lair of doom.

But obviously, that didn't happen. He was just a sentimental old Irishman with bad taste in music.

We arrived at the Newgrange place safely and in one piece. We bought tickets to see the mounds at Knowth and the World's oldest Solar Observatory, Newgrange. We had to take a bus to both locations. These were real busses. Without the blaring Irish music.

Anyway, we arrived at Knowth not knowing what to expect. It turned out that the site housed one large Earthen mound and several similar mounds of smaller stature, which were encircled by huge rocks called Curbstones that had Mesolithic carvings on them.

The mounds were built by ancient Irish people and have stayed water-tight for over 2000 years. We got to go inside of and climb on top of the largest one, which gave us a spectacular view for miles around. I had run out of film by this point, but fortunately Evan took lots of pictures.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Day Two (8/8/09)

When I say briefly, I mean like maybe half an hour. At the most. But it was okay because my migraine was starting to go away. Evan and I discovered that the entertainment system had a colouring book function on it, so we coloured until the flight attendant served us breakfast and tea.

Shortly thereafter, we landed in Dublin after a short flight of only 6.5 hours. I quickly discovered that my phone did not get service in Ireland. We stepped out of the plane into a wet, cold, dreary day (which is apparently how every day is there- more on that later.)

Out of the terminal, we had to stand in a mile-long line (probably not an exaggeration. It was bad) in order to get our passports stamped, and then finally left the airport in a taxi. I noticed that every road sign or other public sign was written first in Gaelic and then in English, like how back home some signs are written in English and then in Spanish.

Our hotel was pretty nifty with modern architecture, right across the street from a beautiful park and within walking distance of the pedestrian shopping streets. We decided to freshen up and walk around a bit. We walked through the park, which had beautiful sculptures, fountains, and pigeons that nearly attacked us. Then we walked over to Grafton street, which is like the St. George street of Dublin. They had really great street performers- most notably, the violinists, statue men, and band of cute Irish boys who all played their instruments remarkably well.

We ate lunch at Gotham Cafe, where my migraine started to come back. Surprise, surprise. Anyway, Gotham was anything but traditional Irish food. Evan and I got penne with pesto, and Jon got some sort of Thai dish. Way to integrate. Even so, it was good food.

We walked around in search of a pharmacy. Apparently, however, Excedrin does not exist in Europe, so I bought an equivalent. I took two pills and we continued on. Our next stop was trinity college to see the Book of Kells, which is an illuminated manuscript. It was beautiful viewing the pages up close. But my favourite part of the stop to Trinity was the Long Room, which is an enormous room filled with shelves and shelves of ancient books. Jon told me that they had considered filming for Harry Potter there. It is against the rules to take pictures there, so the photo included is a stock image of the place.

After we left, we walked down by the river and found Dublin Castle, where they had some beautiful sand sculptures on display. We walked over to the tourist info center, where Evan and I tried on some funny hats. Jean found exciting items with the Brennan crest on them, and she bought a Brennan family heraldry paper. We were all pretty tired at this point- enough so that when we visited Ireland's oldest pub, the Brazen Head (established 1198), we weren't enthused enough to stay awhile or even go inside. So we caught a cab back to the hotel.

Now, even though I still had a migraine and sleep would have been excellent, Jon suggested that we stay awake until at least 7:00 to get used to the time difference. So Evan and I watched this strange children's show called Mega Nanny until 7:00, when we promptly fell asleep.

Day One (8/7/09)

I woke up around 7:00am. Mom drove me to the airport. We almost got killed near the exit by a rogue picnic table that fell off the back of the truck in front of us. I was in quite a state after that. But the whole airport thing went well. Mom waved at me through the security windows for a good fifteen minutes, right up until the part where I was putting on my shoes and walking away.

The first flight was relatively uneventful, up until around mid-flight when we ordered drinks. The woman seated next to me ordered a "water and cranberry-apple" and she was unmistakably Irish. I considered saying to her, "Are you from Ireland? I'm headed there!" but I never actually did.

I landed in Chicago around 11:30 and headed to the International Terminal. You actually have to exit the building and go through a separate set of security to get there. Jean, Jon and Evan were supposed to meet me there around 2:30, so I had time to explore. Mostly, I just listened. Nowhere had I ever heard so many people speaking so many different languages in the same place at the same time. Anyway, I started to get cold, and tired, and was getting a migraine, so I took a Maxalt, wrapped up in a sweater and fell asleep in a bank of chairs.

I got a call from Jon when I woke up- they would be late. They didn't get there until around 4:00. When they got there, I was still feeling awful, so I took another nap. Evan woke me up as the plane was boarding. The migraine was still there, but only just a bit. As we boarded the plane, an Irish flight attendant greeted us and directed us to our seats. When we were seated, an Irish captain's voice came over the intercom and welcomed us to Aer Lingus. I was so excited. I called mom and told her everyone was Irish. Which shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was still cool.

There was an entertainment system installed in the back of every headrest, so Evan and I spent quite a bit of time watching movies, listening to music and playing games. They served us an amazing dinner of some kind of chicken something in rice with salad, a roll, meringue, and tea. After this, I went to sleep. Very briefly.