Day 16: Tara and New Grange

Hey Hey,
So today was friday and I went on a day tour to go see Tara and New Grange! A little history for you: Tara was a very historical place, it is where all the kings used to go to stand at this monument and declare themselves high king. But this would only be true if something happened while they were standing there, eitherwise they were not high king :(

As for New Grange it was built 1000 years before Stone Hedge and 500 before the Pyramids of Giza! It was a place that possibly took the Neolithic people 10-60 years to build up. A scottish man was actually the one that found the remains of Newgrange and had the first walk inside it for thousands of years. It was considered a sacred "death" ritual place. The neolithic people would cremate their people outside of the tomb and then bring their cremated parts inside and lay them on one of the three stone slabs that were inside. The whole point of this place was almost a reasureance that the sun was going to come back after a long and cold winter.

The neolithic people were very in tune with nature and the earth and their god was believed to be the sun god. You can see a little spot up above the entrance to the tomb that looks lke another square box. On the 21st of December the sun would come shining in through that window and it leads all the way to the inside of the tomb (actually hitting the tomb floor because the long passage way to get to the tomb actually elevates. The thought of this was that when the sun came shining through it would touch the souls of the dead and carry them out. It is supposed to be the experience of a lifetime to actually get to see this happen! You can enter into a lottery every year and attempt to get picked out of at least 40,000 people or more. So hey mom and dad, if I get picked you will let me fly all the way back here right? hahaha because i entered it, it was free!

As well the three kind of curly ques that are all linked together are supposed to be a symbol of life, death and re-birth.

The day was really awesome and I had a great time getting to travel to place outside of Dublin! Miss and love you all!


Look out for tomorrow because we are going to Wicklow and Glendalough!