Do they call them suburbs in Ireland? After breakfast, we took pictures of the Molly Malone statue that we'd seen from the duck tour the day before, and I insisted we go to Starbucks. It tasted just like back home. On the agenda for today was Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, then Trim Castle a.k.a. The Braveheart Castle, and Newgrange, an ancient burial tomb, which was recommended by my dad's friend Ed who has been to Ireland several times and is an expert in such things. (Plus it seemed cool online, so I probably would have wanted to go anyway.)
After our walk to see Molly Malone and our Starbucks excursion, we navigated to the Kilmainham Gaol without too many missteps. I had thought that it seemed like a good place to visit, but it was mainly for James. I mean, what man wouldn't like touring a prison? Also we had a coupon book that had buy one, get one offers for a lot of the attractions that were perhaps off the beaten path. Like this one. Anyway, it was pretty powerful. The cells were awful, and they had the place where the public executions were carried out, and the most powerful story was probably that of the Easter Rebellion, which I knew nothing about. We saw the spot where James Connolly was executed. James recognized the "New Wing," where several movies have been filmed.
We drove to Trim, located about an hour northeast of Dublin. It was cold and threatening rain, but we perservered. The castle seems like it's in pretty good shape for something built in 1204. We were a bit early for the tour so we had time to walk the grounds a bit, and James tried to help out three fellow tourists trying to get a decent picture in front of the castle. (They were trying to get a shot of all three of them jumping up in the air. James finally got one, but with our camera, and though we exchanged email addresses, I don't think we ever managed to send it to them. Oops.) We got to tour inside and then we got to go up to the top. Our tour guide mentioned that once she had locked someone up there and only noticed as she was walking back across the grounds and saw frantic hand waving. Meanwhile, it had started to rain steadily. Everyone hustled around pretty quick as it was cold and wet, but then I remembered the tour guide had said something about the gates of the castle being directly parallel to the gates of the castle in the next town, so I wanted to go get a picture. Once I did that, I realized I was the only one left up there, and went over to the door...just as the guide was locking it from the inside. Hopefully James would have come to my rescue eventually but luckily she let me in and we finished the tour without further incident.
After the castle tour, I wandered around the grounds some more (in the rain) while James looked at pictures from the Braveheart filming. Then we grabbed some lunch at The Castle Restaurant just across the street, where James had a burger and confused the staff by ordering "fries." We also noticed there was "Southern fried chicken" on the menu, and James asked if that meant Southern Ireland. I don't think they were sad to see us go.
Leaving Trim, James turned the wrong way on the one way street and came upon a police car. Luckily he either recognized our rental car or noticed James waving sheepishly at him. We headed over to Newgrange hurriedly, as I noted that it closed at 4:15 in winter. Unfortunately the website and guidebook neglected to mention that the last tour was at 3:15, which was just too bad since we arrived closer to 4. "You can tour the museum here onsite," the nice lady said. What the hell, we were already there, so we forked over some exorbitant amount of euros to look at the (tiny) museum, the highlight of which was the movie theater that had a replica of how the inner chamber is lit by sunlight at sunrise on the winter solstice. (See, doesn't that sound really cool? I wanted to see that.)
We then headed to our B&B which was in the coastal town of Skerries. We had fairly good directions but we COULD NOT find the place. We located the road it was on and drove down it at least twice. Nothing. Finally we went to a gas station in town and somebody took pity on us and let us follow her. We had been on the right road, but the B&B was just off the road, on a side road, with no signs. We could have driven all night and never found it. Our first Irish B&B was a bit ... odd. It was run by an older couple, and we were the only guests that night. We were met at the door by one son, and led to the kitchen where the owner was watching soccer (football?) with another son. Both sons left but said their dad would want to talk to us. The owner was on oxygen for "a bad chest infection" and kept hacking. It was awkward. He asked where North Carolina was in relation to Connecticut. He seemed like a nice guy but the constant hacking was a bit off-putting. Eventually we asked for dinner recommendations and he named a few places in town.
We ended up at Stoop Your Head pub, which was lively, and sat at the bar since there were no seats in the restaurant proper. James branched out and tried baked salmon but still apple pie for dessert. I had beef stroganoff.