Back from the East

We’ve covered quite a bit of ground since we’ve gone incommunicado. We spent Wednesday morning seeing a few more sights in Dublin - primarily St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Jameson Distillery. Paul and Carol volunteered to be taste tasters, comparing the tastes of Jack Daniels, Johnnie Walker Black, and, of course, the triple-distilled, water from the Wicklow mountains, natural-gas-toasted-barley-containing “water of life” that is Jameson. I must admit, the tasters got some very generous portions, making them somewhat suggestible and subject to a moderate amount of teary and heartfelt testimonial to the inspirational and curative properties of Jameson. All but Paul, that is. His loyalties remain with Scotch.

Wednesday afternoon, we headed south of Dublin to Glendalough - the “glen of two lakes.” An amazingly peaceful former monastery founded by St. Kevin in the year 500 A.D. You see pictures of Stacy in front of the lower lake and a few pictures of the round tower and a stone church built in the year 1000. You can read more about Glendalough by paging back to the entry about this place from our visit two years ago. Many of us enjoyed some wonderful Irish Beef Stew in the little town of Laragh, just a few km outside of the monastic site. We then drove north of Dublin to the town of Navan and re-visited the Newgrange hotel, a wonderful old hotel that has recently been restored to its former elegance. After a very restful night’s sleep and a huge “full Irish” (Stacy was particularly happy to have found “a big shower” in the room), we headed off to the megalithic “passage tomb” of Newgrange. Again, you could learn more about this amazing site by visiting my description of it from two years ago. Suffice it to say, it is older than Stonehenge, older than the Great Pyramids, older even than Paul. It is recognized by the UN as a World Heritage site. It is truly amazing.

We left Newgrange and drove back to Cleggan, clear across the island, stopping in the quaint and wonderful Westport for dinner. The sunset shots are from the drive from Westport to Cleggan. Again, I would encourage you to click on the pictures to see them at full size. Our weather continues to be marvelous - cool, mostly clear - certainly a vast difference from our trip before.