We had a 10:30 am ticket; this was really for an 11:15 am shuttle. I believe that the documentation mentioned this, but I forgot and did not plan the bus trip time well for catching the bus. We arrived early.
Like for the jail, we had to pre-book this ticket a month ahead of time. This ticket did not look to sale out as quickly as the jail. However, they moved from tickets available 7 days before to 30 days before in the middle of that range for our trip day. I just happened to check early and found them; others may not have found them yet. The documentation said 30 days, but this was originally not how the site was setup. I can only guess for some seasons or months that tickets did not need to be available 30 days in advance. We were right at the beginning of May.
Views from the bus. The bus went off a straight path because it also had a stop near the Battle of the Boyne Visitor Centre.
From the Brú na Bóinne bus stop/parking lot, there was a nice arbor trail, with views of the river, to the Visitor Center. We got our tickets, and then since we were so early, we had a lot of time in the Visitor Center. This worked out since I'm a slow reader. It was an informative, well done visitor center. An interesting thing that we learned is that they did community burials instead of individual burial and did cremations. Travis in an example of a tomb passage.
After finishing the visitor center, we found the area with a cafe, restroom, and gift shop. I visited the restroom, and Travis found more displays. Then we sat down and had a brought snack together. After we started heading to the shuttle meeting point for our tour. We passed the River Boyne and got some good pictures. They said that it was a 15 minute walk to the shuttle meeting, but it did not feel that long.
We checked in for the shuttle and directed to sit until our shuttle arrived. We stopped first at Knowth. We got an origination, tour, and then some time to walk around alone. In that time too, our guide was starting a movie in the building next to the site, which also had a museum. The tour guide gave us a lot of information. Another building here had a restroom. We needed to be promptly back to the bus at 12:30pm to go to Newgrange.
Burial mounds with sand martins' nests in the slots in the middle and petroglyphs on the rocks at the bottom.
At Knowth, we got to go on top of a mound. It was setup with stairs to go on top. Pretty views with yellow fields from the top.
The building on the left had the movie and some museum displays. The building in the front had the restrooms and pictures of the evacuation.
A hole in the top of the mound.
We then arrived at Newgrange. We had to walk to it. I liked these black stones that were sticking out.
The famous front view. Here we were allowed to go into the burial passage. Our guide gave a short talk, and then we were split into two groups, so that there was enough room inside. Our group was first, and the next explored the petroglyphs while we were inside. Cameras were not allowed inside and all bags needed to be held at knee level to prevent scrapping the inside of the tomb. He showed us features inside the tomb, did a small talk, and then there was an electric light demonstration of the winter solstice experience. The winter solstice experience is 2 days before and after and on the winter solstice a beam of sunlight lines up in order to shine into the tomb entrance. For this experience, thousands of people from around the world sign up for a lottery to try to win entrance into the tomb during the sunrise of these days. I cannot remember the number of winners and only find maybe 38 winners.
After our tour time, we headed out to explore around the tomb. Then we had to be back on the bus by 1:25 pm. We were warned at Knowth that their restrooms were nicer, so we only used those and not at Newgrange. They looked more like chemical toilets from the outside, at least.
Someone working at the Newgrange offered to get our picture together :).
Everyone was back to the bus on time; however, one couple was asking directions to somewhere. The bus driver, being a friendly Irish, was being very helpful, but we wanted them to hurry. We wanted to catch the 1:50 pm bus back to Drogheda with the walk back to the bus stop and buses only running here every 2 hours. We did make it with plenty of time.
We stopped a Tesco on the way back to the hostel for lunch and dinner. I had British Roast with Yorkshire pudding. Travis had chili beef noodles. For dinner, we got chicken stuffed with cheese and bacon. This sounded a little strange but was good. Cute art in the kitchen at the hostel and a sign over the door in the kitchen.
When we arrived back in Drogheda, we did noticed a race in progress. It was a 5K and 10K. It was Sunday of a three day weekend with a Monday bank holiday. After lunch, we went back out, planning a walk along the river. Unfortunately, this was where the race was too; we were surprised that it was still in progress. We were able to sneak onto the trail by the river after some waiting (others were too).
They had an albatross statue just like the one on Cape Horn; I did not quite catch it at the correct angle. The River and the bridge. Travis's snack in the room.
