The second week of our trip was a mix of old and new: it started off with a hike through the forest in Cong and a big band show at a pub in Galway. On Tuesday we took a ferry to windy Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands, and biked through some very rocky hillsides out to Dún Aonghasa, a semi-circular Iron Age fort on the edge of a cliff that drops over 100 meters to the sea. On our way north to [London]derry (site of the 1972 Bogside Massacre/Bloody Sunday), we stopped off at the Carrowmore megalithic cemetery, Sligo abbey, and the Donegal castle; from Derry we visited the Old Bushmills Distillery, and hiked to the bizarre yet magnificent Giant’s Causeway, a tumble of over 40,000 interlocking hexagonal basalt columns. (Followers of our last trip will appreciate these two photos). Thursday saw us in Belfast where we visited the requisite Titanic sites, toured City Hall (it was the previous Lord Mayor’s last day in office!), and visited the Linen Hall Library with a great exhibition of political posters from the Troubles of the late 1960s.

After Belfast, we continued south to Dublin via Brú na Bóinne, a prehistoric megalithic site that is home to the three enormous mound and passage tombs of Dowth (unexcavated), Knowth (the largest, with passages aligned with the Equinox sunrise and sunset), and Newgrange (the most well-known, with a cross-shaped passage aligned with the winter Solstice sunrise, which you can go into). These monuments are over 5,000 years old: older than the pyramids at Giza. Once back in Dublin, we made a point of visiting the Kilmainham Gaol, which housed many of the leaders of the 1916 rebellion; the National Museum, home to Ireland’s goldwork hoards and the Iron Age bog bodies; Trinity College and the exquisitely intricate Book of Kells; and had a whirlwind tour of some of the highlights in the Chester Beatty Library. Josh was able to nab some last-minute tickets to the Saturday night show of Bill Bailey’s latest UK tour, which was a blast. And after the only two days of rain we saw on our trip, at 5am on Monday morning the Emerald Isle said goodbye with a glorious sunrise. What a way to see us off!