(p.s.  If you're looking for wide, sweeping vistas of the places we visited, you're not going to find many.  When I got all my slides back, I was much more pleased by the photos I took that were small details rather than the whole picture.)

    (p.p.s.  If you enjoyed these photos and live in a community under the 104th Area Support Group, look for them again in an upcoming edition of Connections Magazine.)

Dublin

    After we flew into Dublin airport on Friday afternoon and picked up our car, we drove down to Dublin, found our bed and breakfast, and immediately set out to do some light exploring before finally going to bed.  We struck out even further on Saturday --  the Book of Kells at Trinity Colleege, lunch on St. Stephen's Green, and tours of St. Patrick's Cathredral and the Guinness Storehouse at St. James Gate.  Kelly and I also took a couple of hours to indulge our different pasttimes -- she went shopping while I wandered around taking photos.  At the end of the day, a good time was had by all.  After all, it was in Dublin that Kelly made the surprising revalation that she liked Guinnes even more than I did (although I had a few pints of the black stuff, I discovered I was more of a Smithwick's man).
 
 

Trinity College		The River Liffey
Christchurch Cathedral		Dublin Castle
St. Patrick's Cathedral
	St. Audeon's Church

Newgrange, Mellifont Abbey, and Monasterboice

    On Sunday morning, we left Dublin and drove north.  First on our agenda was Newgrange, an ancient tomb on a hill overlooking rolling farmland.  Newgrange was built around 3200 B.C. and consists of a large mound with a narrow passage about 65 feet long.  The passage ends in a small chamber with three alcoves and is designed in such a way that, for the five-day period around the winter solstice, the center alcove is lit by the sun for exactly 17 minutes.  Since the tomb was left open to souvenir hunters for a couple hundred years, we may never really know why the builders had this idea in mind.

    Next was Mellifont Abbey, the first of many abbeys established by Cistercian monks in Ireland.  Construction began in 1142 A.D., and the abbey was consecrated in 1157.  The Cistercians initially took care of all the labor on the surrounding lands and adhered to a daily ritual of prayer.  However, so much arable land was donated to the brothers of the abbey that a new order of monk, the "lay monk," was established so that work could get done in outlying areas and the core brotherhood could still devote sufficient time to God.  Like most monastic sites in Ireland, the abbey was doomed to ruin when King Henry VIII of England, mistrustful of the Catholic church and the power it had gained, seized all church lands; the Cistercian brothers were expelled in 1537 and the abbey slowly crumbled under the "care" of absentee landlords.

    Monasterboice contains the ruins of a much older Christian community.  The settlement was founded in 520 A.D. by St. Buite and was inhabited until 1097, when Monasterboice burned and was abandoned.  There are three High Crosses here, large stone Celtic crosses adorned with carvings that depict many different scenes from the Old and New Testament.  The site also contains a round tower, one of many built in the 10th century as a defense against Viking raiders.
 
 

Mellifont Abbey
		Monasterboice
High Cross and base of round tower

Hill of Slane, Baltinglass Abbey, and Castle Kilkea

    In the first few centuries after the death of Christ, Ireland was still very much a pagan land, and the people obeyed pagan laws and rites.  One such right was the feast of Belthane, which in 433 A.D. coincided around the spring equinox (and, as it turns out, Easter).  As part of the rites around the Belthane festival, a huge bonfire was built at the Hill of Tara, ancient seat of power of the Irish pagan kings, and Irish law at the time dictated that no fires could be lit in the area around Tara to compete with this blaze.  According to legend, St. Patrick, in open defiance of the pagan law, had an equally large fire built on the Hill of Slane.  It's said that this competing bonfire signaled the end of the pagan religion in Ireland.  The ruins on the hilltop today are from a Franciscan monastery built in 1512 and are very accessible to the public.  When we visited, the site was completely open to the public, and children were climbing all over the ruins (a similar site in the U.S. would probably be completely fenced off).

    Baltinglass Abbey was founded in 1148 by Cistercian monks on a plot overlooking the River Slaney.  Like other monastic sites, it was abandoned in the mid-sixteenth century when Henry VIII nationalized all church lands.  The site is easy to see from the motorway, but not as easily accessed; we had already driven through Baltinglass town when we saw the abbey and had to backtrack a ways to get to the ruins.  Well worth it!

    We stayed at Castle Kilkea on Sunday night and were very happy with our accommodations.  The castle was built in 1180 and is billed as the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Ireland.  Today, it is the centerpiece of a golf resort.  Rather than pay €100 or more for dinner for two at the castle restaurant, we nipped off to nearby Castledermot for a surprisingly good dinner in a pub, then came back and snuck around the castle like a couple of kids.  I still have no idea why we were sneaking around -- after all, we were paying guests!
 
 

Hill of Slane
Baltinglass Abbey
	Castle Kilkea

The Wicklow Mountains, St. Kevin's Way, and Glendalough

    On Monday, we set off to enjoy County Wicklow, the "Garden of Ireland."  The road from Kilkea to Glendalough passes through some amazing scenery in the Wicklow Mountains.  Rolling farmland soon gave way to starkly beautiful mountainsides disappearing into the clouds.  After seeing so much lush, green land in the lowlands, it was amazing to see the rocky hillsides dotted with heather.  Once over Wicklow Pass, the road crosses St. Kevin's Way, a trail that winds down the glacially carved valley to Glendalough National Park.  Where the road first meets St. Kevin's Way, we found a simply beautiful little ruined church right next to a burbling mountain stream.

    Glendalough, the Glen of the Two Lakes, is a beautiful area, with both romantic ruins and a breathtaking landscape.  When the valley was carved by glaciers, there was originally only one lake, but silt carried down the hill by Glendalough Waterfall eventually built up in the valley and split the lake in two.  The monastic city standing today was originally founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century and features one of the better maintained round towers of the 31 left standing in Ireland today.  St. Kevin himself was a hermit; you can see the man-made cave where he lived by the lake (St. Kevin's Bed) and the ruins of the cramped beehive hut (St. Kevin's Cell) where he went for seclusion.

    It is worth mentioning a few of the colorful myths that surround St. Kevin.  Here are some of my favorites.  One involves his longevity; it's said he lived for 120 years (ca. 498 to 618 A.D.).  At his birth, his mother suffered no labor pains and was attended by 12 angels.  When he was around 30, a beautiful woman tried to seduce him, but he ultimately was able to resist temptation.  Later in life, when he was at Glendalough, he fought a powerful pagan witch and was able to throw her to her death in the lake.  (These two myths are sometimes combined, perhaps as a cautionary tale about fast women.)  He was loved by animals; a white cow brought his family milk twice a day when he was an infant, and an otter brought him salmon at Glendalough (and even rescued his psalter book, undamaged, when it fell in the lake).  Finally, my favorite: when a blackbird laid an egg in his hand, he carefully held it (some say he didn't move at all) until the egg hatched and the tiny bird was able to fly away.
 
 

Pebble beach near Wicklow
Wicklow Pass	Ruin on St. Kevin's Way
Monastic village, Glendalough		Poulanass Waterfall
		Reefert Church