Well last night was uneventful with no ghosts at Ross Castle B&B. We spent a good bit of time this morning redistributing our luggage so that none of them were overweight for our flight this evening.

We had anticipated stopping at a few places, but we only ended up with time for one stop, at Newgrange. This passage tomb was built around 3,200 B.C., which makes it over 5,000 years old (older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza). I was disappointed to learn that the outside was actually a reconstruction (using the real stones found there) based on what an archaeologist believed it might have looked like (some other archaeologists disagree). However, it didn’t take away from the impressiveness of the large entry stone with its carvings, or from the inside (where unfortunately photography was not allowed). The neatest thing about the tomb was that it was designed so that for just a few minutes at the winter solstice, light would enter the chamber through an opening above the entry. They simulated this by turning off all the lights inside, and turning on an artificial light near the opening.

We headed to Dublin Airport, turned in our car (noting that we had traveled over 1,600 miles in it), and said goodbye to Ireland as we boarded our flight to London (which had been delayed).