On Wednesday morning I got up early and headed out for a photo walk in Kildare. The town had the most fantastic doors, and I even had a quick chat with the local beer delivery truck driver who stopped me to point out a very picturesque pub down the street.
After breakfast, we headed over to the Irish National Stud farm and Japanese Gardens. The farm is huge, and we enjoyed our walk around seeing the horses, but the Japanese Gardens were the highlight. We took the "rugged path" through the gardens (built in the early 1900s), which had the theme of the journey of life. The cave of ignorance was particularly fun...and dark! I kept thinking the kids would love winding through all the little paths, including the stones that were stuck in the little streams of the garden. We did a little shopping here (had to get something horsey for Faith), and then headed out to the north of Dublin.
We were on a mission on this day as we had to get in the Kildare sights, then Newgrange, and end up back at Malahide (just outside of Dublin) before we headed into Dublin to see the sights.
Newgrange is a World Heritage Site, so I was very excited to see it. We got to the visitor centre just as a bus was about to leave to Newgrange, so we had to hoof it out to the bus stop (a bit of a jog). The bus took us about 5 minutes away to the actual site. The day itself was bright and sunny, as most of our days in Ireland were, strangely enough. So, when we walked up towards Newgrange, which is a "passage burial mound", it was stunning to see this mound with brilliant white rocks on the front of it and bright blue skies behind, surrounded by lush green grass. Newgrange is over 5000 years old, and we were able to go into the burial mound, in small groups to see the central area built into the mound, in the exact state it was more than 5000 years ago. It was exhilirating for me, but a bit of trial if you were at all claustrophobic.
After this jaunt, it was getting late so we had to head out to our next stop, Malahide. Here we stopped at a Malahide Castle, which had been lived in by the same family for about 800 years until the 70s when the last son died without heirs (according to the tour guide, "he didn't like women, if you know what I mean"). His sister sold it off to pay the death taxes, and the local county took it over as a park and heritage site. Mom and I took the tour while Aunt Margaret enjoyed watching the sights in the park. This was the better option by the end of the day as my legs were screaming for me to sit down and put my feet up!
We headed into Malahide to get a B&B (a very posh seaside town that reminded my of Niagara on the Lake), but ended up down the road in Portmarnock at the White Sands Hotel as they were full-up in Malahide due to a conference. The White Sands was right on the water and we could see Ireland's Eye as we walked out of the hotel. The hotel was just redone in a very modern style, which I quite liked, but it took us a bit to figure out how to turn on the lights! They had an energy-saver program going, so you had to put your room card into a slot by the door and then leave it there for the lights to stay on. As well, we almost got to spend the night with three guys. Why? Well they originally sent us to a room that the three had previously booked. Luckily they caught the error before we'd put in our luggage and possibly given everyone a big scare when the men would have shown up later. It gave us a good laugh.
That night we walked along the seaside down to an Italian place and on the way back saw the almost full moon reflected on the water. Yet another beautiful sight in Ireland.
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