Dublin

The next stop for me was Dublin, Ireland. It was a quick flight over from the Dusseldorf airport to get to there and we stayed in Avalon House, a pretty famous hostel. Avalon house was actually pretty nice. It was kind of what  you would expect from a hostel, but a lot nicer. The biggest problem was that our room was right next to a church and when the church bells rang they would wake us up.

The first day we got there wasn't super productive, but it was nice to just walk around the city and kind of figure out where everything was. The next morning we went on a walking tour of the city and saw a lot of really interesting things. One thing that I thought was really cool was that in Dublin a viking settlement had been found but was destroyed to make room for a building. The only thing that was left was the outline of a viking house that the city had made. We learned that a lot of people (between 10 and 20) would all sleep in one bedroom, so we laid down to see if we would fit inside.

We also went to see the city hall, the Dublin Castle, Trinity College, and Christ Church Cathedral. 

The  next day we went 

on a tour of the Irish countryside. This tour, by far, was my favorite part of the weekend.This funny little Irish man picked up about 15 of us in his van early the next morning to take us on the tour. The first stop was a mound of earth in the middle of a field. It was called Fourknocks Passage Tomb. The tomb was circular on the inside and had designs carved intot he walls to represent different things, like the seasons, or the months. The tomb was a place where a king would bury his family immediate and extended family members when they would die, so in this tomb, the remains of about 60 people had been found. Next we went to the cemetery of the St. Buite Monastery.  The cemetery was really interesting because even though it looked ancient it was still in use and people can be buried there even today. The most interesting part of it was the celtic crosses. The crosses were huge, probably 8 or 10 feet tall, and had images from bible stories carved on them.The tour guide showed us one that was kind of funny because when the priests were telling the stone workers how to design it the pictures came out funny. The priests said that jesus looked like "a very holy man" and so the workers carved him to look like a monk, and the that the roman soldiers looked like "very bad men" so the workers designed them to look like vikings. 

Our third stop was Slane Abbey. Slane Abbey was really cool. Here was where St. Patrick lit a huge Paschal fire in defiance of the King who didn't allow the

 other fires

 to be lit until he had lit his own. Because of this fire, St Patrick was taken to the king and the king allowed him to continue trying to convert the Irish to Catholicism and even gave him his own body guard as an escort around the country.

The final stop on our day trip was the Hill of Tara. It was the old capital of the country and it was the location at which a new king would be decided if they needed one.

On Tara there is another mound called the Mound of Hostages. When a petty king was not obeying the orders of the more powerful king, the king would kidnap a female family member of the petty king and take her to the mound of hostages and leave her there to starve unless the petty king started to obey the king's wishes.  There is also a spanish princess buried there and so is the Irish king.

Dublin was a really cool city to visit and it was so easy being there because everyone spoke English. I would love to go visit again.