Newgrange and Knowth

Well, we enjoyed going to the Clonmacnoise Monestary, which had one arch that was quite interesting. Often known as "the whispering arch" one can stand facing one side and whisper to it, while the person on the other side can hear it. Brad and I were in disbelief, so we tried it... Low and behold, it works. That night, we drove into Drogheda to stay the evening in a hostel. Turns out, the hostel was pretty cool. It was a loft in the top of a pretty cool building, with a poop muncher. If you don't know what a poop muncher is, it acts like a garbarator for your toilet. Once you flush it, it munches evening. It also made you feel like you were waking up the world in the middle of the night. We chilled, bought a bag of soup and had some beers.

We got up bright and early to head to the Bru Na Boinne passage tombs. After a few wrong turns, we finally got there and toured the Newgrange and Knowth passage tombs. Turns out these things are old... Really old. A thousand years older than Stonehenge. We went inside the one at Newgrange and were able to see how they were built. It is amazing that they have survived all this time without being damaged!! As to why they were built or who built them, we have no idea. They were certainly worth going to!

After Newgrange, we went back to Drogheda to St. Peter's Cathedral to see a preserved head of St. Oliver Plunkett. He was hung in 1681, and they removed his head and stuck it in the church. I was quite stunned by the whole thing. Brad laughed at me and took my picture of the 350 year old head and myself.

After Drogheda, we headed to Belfast. Belfast is in Northern Ireland, so it is actually an entirely different country. It felt totally different there! We learned that Belfast has an extremely dark past and there has been very divided Protestant and Catholic ways. We took a black taxi tour, and our driver filled us in on some brief history. There are many murals around the city, as a reminder of the violence that occurred over religion. Peace is certainly the answer they want to maintain. There is a peace wall that divides two "hardcore" neighbourhoods: the Catholics and the Protestants. The wall is 16m high and is used to keep people separate when riots get out of control. What shocked us: they still lock the gates when riots happen. Shocking thing #2: the Europa hotel has been bombed 33 times. We walked by it and both felt pretty uneasy.

Today we went and walked around Belfast. We went to the Titanic museum, which is built where they actually built it!! The museum took us over 2 hours to get through, but was seriously worth it.

Chill evening tonight, watching the ocean and drinking wine.