Ireland: More country than I thought.

We started our day traveling by train to the airport and then by EasyJet followed by me DRIVING! The day had finally come for me to drive. I was so nervous to drive not only on the wrong side of the road but getting in on the wrong side of the car and reverting back to a manual and shifting with my left hand. Our fight was delayed and turbulent due to weather... are we surprised? Not so much. A travel day but more than that we're taking on 

Looks like we should fly right into the darkness ... that'll make for a great flight.

Isn't it weird looking?!

There he is. We named in Griffin. 

Our first stop was Navan Fort. We struggled to find it, even with our GPS, we got pretty far out and turned around, turns out we turned around exactly at the point of the hiking trail up to Navan Fort. We stopped for directions and some chips and this was my first accidental pulling out in front of someone. YIKES! I looked the wrong way. But we lived and it sort of helped me realize how important it was to super focus when driving here. We found the park and hiked out to it in a bit of drizzle but all in all it was pretty nice. As Jason stood on top the drizzle turned to rain, and while we hiked back the rain turned into hail. Yes, HAIL! We're completely soaked and getting hailed on. Sure I expected wet weather but this was like a damn hurricane or monsoon. We had to basically strip in the parking lot. After getting some food we headed south to see New Grange but by the time we got there the last tour had gone and all we got to do was use the bathroom. Major disappointment especially after changing my clothes in yet another national monument park. So we checked into our hotel which was more like what we pictured as a yoga retreat than a hotel. Sadly they didn't have a dryer and it was the first of many comments I got saying "Didn't you expect raining in Ireland". Um, yeah I did but not so much rain it took 3 days for my tennis shoes to dry and rain penetrating a water resistant coat, a zip up sweater and a t-shirt. Anyway, they did have a steam room that we used to dry our very wet clothing.

Can you see how wet I am? Perhpas not but the look on my face says it all. 

It was a square shaped building with a courtyard in the middle.

After a "short" drive we finally made it to the Hill of Tara. I say short because it was supposed to take a few minutes and took us almost on hour... however our return took much much longer. It was at Tara that we finally had that Ireland experience. An older man and his dog Lucky, told us about the powers of  the rocks, took us and had Jason sit on one of the most powerful rocks there. Told us the lore of the city and bitched a bit about how many people would be up there smoking pot on the summer solstace. I found Tara to be amazing! Actually since I'm writing this after finishing our trip to Ireland, I can say it was perhaps the best thing we did in Ireland.

Part of a rainbow.

Random rubble. 

St. Patrick

Sheep all over the Hill of Tara. 

The Stone of Destiny. 

Legend says when the king put his foot on it, the stone cried. 

This rock is used for healing among other things and is full of energy.

 Like I said it took us forever to get home to our hotel. Lucky for us it stays light until 10 so even though we were lost and I felt like I drove through every small town in the country and took every round about we had daylight to guide us. We did see some strange sites, including a TN state flag.

EMO gas?! haha

TN flag