Newgrange=Neolithic Tombs

After being violently ill for the whole of yesterday, I was afraid that I would not be able to make to today's trip out to Newgrange. However, after some sleep and some meds, I awoke to find my stomach more at ease which was a nice change. I made tea instead of coffee and managed to keep that and some oatmeal within the confines of my body. This cheered me up some, I then took my daily vitamin along with my new motion sickness medication that Mom sent over for me, followed by a couple of Tylenol due to the headache from dehydration yesterday. I packed a nalgene full of water along with some light crackers and I was ready to go on my trip for the day.

Everyone was up and out the door by 9:45, the time the bus was supposed to pick us up. So I left a little early to scope out our new pick up location and it turns out that the director of the trips had the street wrong and we ended up needing to backtrack in order to get onto the bus, no big deal. We held up a little traffic but made it in good time back to the correct location. Once everyone was aboard we traveled about one hour north to the town of Newgrange and on the way I saw a huge wind turbine, long-haired horses and baby sheeps! The scenery was breathtaking.

Once we arrived, we were herded to the visitors' center where we got our entrance stickers and tickets and then wandered around for a bit. We took in some displays, grabbed some coffee, whatever we wanted to do. After this, we made our way to the shuttle stop, crossing over the bridge that Doug (shout out!)made a mockery of in an awesome way, and were then conveyed to the actual site that we were there to see, the Neolithic Tombs.

The tombs are over 5,000 years old and we got to see one of the largest in the country. There is barely enough space to walk into it and it can be quite cramped. I know that I suffered from some claustrophobia as did a couple of others. It was quite narrow and short until you got to the main chamber. From the outside of the tomb, it seems as though it is one big fun house being approximately 200ft across. However, I was disappointed when I found out that inside was only about 15-20 ft across and it was a main room with 3 antechambers that were simply small rooms off of the larger one. It was a little unnerving to think of all the people that had been in and out of the tombs over the years.

One of the best things about the tomb was the beautiful quartz on the outside. The entire thing was surrounded by 97 kurbstones, and on top of that was a wall built entirely of quartz and inlaid with round stones for decoration. It was quite impressive to think of the abilities that went into building such a place. The guide also informed us that the entire building was water tight, meaning also air tight, and that not one drop of water had ever succeeded in penetrating the roof in the many, many years that the tomb had been standing. It is not known who built the tomb or how or exactly why but there are many guesstimates. One of the biggest and most impressive of these is the idea that the people who built the structure actually used boats and floated them for miles down the river in order to gain the stones with which to build.

There was a brief simulation of what happens when the winter solstice sun hits the entrance to the tomb and that was pretty neat. There is a small window above the doorway to the structure which allows for sunlight penetrating at exactly due east to enter the tomb and fill it with light. Apparently there is also a lottery to win the option of witnessing this amazing event. When the sun comes in, it is supposed to reflect and fill the entire tomb with light. We also watched a video in the visitors' center which informed us that the winter solstice was the most important celebration of the year due to the impending coming of spring. And that the built who built the tomb may have used it in their worship of the sun and not simply as a place for resting the dead. Besides the large structure there are at least 37 smaller ones scattered within a 10km range. It is interesting but hard to imagine people building these structures over 2-3 generations of people. It's amazing what a little ingenuity and fear of god will do for a person. Meaning that the people who built the tombs were also afraid that if they did not worship the sun in the correct manner that their gods would be angry and make the winter last even longer, a very harsh sentence indeed.

After we poked around the inside of the tomb, we were able to have a quick jaunt around it to check out the various stones, carvings, and of course landscape before hopping back onto the shuttle to make our way back to the visitors' center. (I caught Garrett playing "Karate Kid" on the stones which was pretty entertaining.) After our return, we came to the cafe for lunch. I had a tuna salad sandwich with chicken noodle soup and some powerade. Others chose from various other sandwiches and baguettes and of course some opted to pay extra for dessert :D

We met back at the bus for 2pm and were soon on our way back home. I was able to get some shut eye on the bus due to my motion sickeness meds, woot woot! Once we got back, we had to make room for all the fire trucks at the end of Grafton, someone said there was a movie being shot there? IDK, looked more like a fire in Burger King if you ask me!