New Grange, Ireland and Belfast, Northern Ireland- Day 14

We woke up bright and early this morning and headed to the nearest airport to Matt and Karey's house (which was about an hour away) to fly to Dublin.

I won't go into great details but I'll just say we didn't give ourselves enough time at the airport before the flight left and Matt, Karey, the kiddos and I almost missed the flight and Dad and Grandma did miss the flight due to being held up at security.

 

Dad and Grandma got the next flight to Dublin, a couple of hours later. Once we got to Dublin, Matt and Karey and family and I got in our rental car and headed in the direction of our hotel with some pit stops along the way. 

Our first stop was Newgrange burial mound in Ireland which dates back to 3200 BC which is actually older than Stonehenge. The picture above was the path to the visitor center at Newgrange.

Just outside the visitor center.

Can I just say how beautiful Ireland was (England as well)?! It was so green and breathtaking even at the end of January/beginning of February! I loved it!

Along the path to the bus to take us to the burial mound.

The outside of the burial mound. The white stone is not original but there are stones at the entrance that are from that time period and have prehistoric art on them.

The view from the mound.

The entrance of the mound. We couldn't take pictures inside, but basically you walk through this narrow, short (about 21 yards) tunnel that opens up to a small room with a taller ceiling where you can see some really old art on the walls. Although they don't know exactly what some of the art symbolizes, the tour guide told us what they've been told about them. I really enjoyed our tour. The tour guide was knowledgeable and was passionate about what he was talking about.

The tour guide mentioned that you can come back to the mound (but you have to sign up) for the winter solstice when the sun will shine directly into the back of the inside of the mound through the tunnel. It still amazes me what kind of engineering it took to align the tunnel with the winter solstice sun.

Matt and Karey and the kiddos in front of the mound.

On the other side of the bridge leading to the Newgrange visitor center.

After Newgrange, we stopped in Belfast, Northern Ireland to see the Titanic Museum as well as meet up with one of Karey's cousins and her husband for dinner.

I didn't know before I went to the Titanic Museum that the Titanic was built in Belfast and then sailed to Southampton, England for its maiden voyage.

In the picture above is where the Titanic was built right along side its sister ship, the Olympic.

 

The Titanic was huge!

There was a room in the museum that had the reports and distress signal messages from the Titanic on April 14 and 15. You can read some of the messages in the picture above and the rest of the pictures below.

I was crying through this room.

I took a few pictures in the Titanic Museum (as you can tell) but I was also trying to soak it all in. This museum was fascinating and it had so much information and it was well worth the cost.

After the museum, we met up for dinner with Karey's cousin and her husband (I can't remember their names right now), who live in Belfast as the husband goes to medical school there.

Then we drove to our hotel which was north of Belfast, closer to Giant's Causeway, which I will write about next time...