Dublin, Ireland – T & G Travels

Days 22 and 23 - Dublin, Ireland

Thursday 4th September 2025 - Newgrange and Boyne Valley

Today we had booked a full 8 hour day tour to Boyne Valley, Newgrange, Knowth, Mellifont Abbey and Monasterboice. Along the way we picked up some lunch, had a coffee and arrived at the appointed meeting place at 8:50.

At the appointed meeting spot.

We had a minibus, 29 travellers, driver/guide Matt from Hilltop Trek Tours. Matt quickly settled into an entertaining and informative diatribe of Irish history and a variety of facts on our way to our first stop in the Boyne Valley. The history he shared started in Neolithic times and finished with the Great Famine in the 19th century.

It was about a 50 minute drive to our first stop, Bru na Boinne (The Palace of the Boyne), a UNESCO World Heritage site. The site is dominated by prehistoric passage tombs built around 3200BC, making them 5200 years old, older than the Pyramids !

These settlers are traced back to Anatolia, they had pagan beliefs and megalithic tombs. The site also contains the largest collection of megalithic art in the world!

We could only walk around the Knowth site and passage tomb, but was able to enter the passage tomb at Newgrange. Truly remarkable engineering with megalithic rocks, placed precisely so that the sun rising on the winter solstice would shine a beam of light right through the passage to the hall at the end of a 28 metre passage. These people who built the monuments belonged to a thriving farming community who had within their society expertise in architecture, engineering, geology, art and astronomy. Truly amazing!

We then visited Mellifont Abbey, ruined by Henry VIII during the reformation, and headed onto Monasterboice to see the Celtic High Crosses, one of which is 5.5 metres tall depicting different stories from the bible carved into the stone.

We arrived back in Dublin just after 17:00. Fish and veggies for dinner again making good use of the fully equipped apartment.

Friday 5th September 2025 - Dublin City

Today was a transfer day to new accommodation, still within Dublin, but closer to airport, at least that was the reasoning Graeme used when booking this months ago. Knowing that we only had a few things to do in Dublin, we had a late morning check out (around 10:30), left our suitcases at Stay City apartments and went back into the city. Tania had some old English coins and we happened across a coin dealer in an arcade on our first day here, so back to see him with our cache of valuable coins. Tania was offered 3 euros for a whole lot of old coins no longer legal tender. We were hoping to get more than half a cup of coffee in the deal - oh well !

Last night we had tried to book some tickets to a guided tour of Dublin Castle but they were booked out. We went there anyway to see what we could do, and found they hold back some tickets for each tour so we were able to get onto the 12:00 timeslot. Mary was our tour guide and the castle is very lavish on the inside as opposed to its rather bland 17th century red brick exterior. Again the history that led to the independence of Ireland was talked about, the more we hear about the British rule of nearly 800 years it is not surprising that there is still a great deal of animosity.

Following our tour of Dublin Castle, we headed over to Trinity College for a look around. Graeme was hoping to get into see the Long library, but it was all ticketed entry so we gave it a miss.

Headed back to collect our luggage, got a taxi to our new accommodation which was only 2 kilometres closer to the airport from where we had just been staying ! It turns out we would have been better just staying where we were - not to worry ! The taxi actually dropped us two blocks away from our accommodation, so we just said it was ok, we would walk back. We did, and Graeme pulled a muscle in his upper arm lifting the suitcase over the rough side walks and gutters. He was in a bit of pain by the time we got to our accommodation and it was left to Tania to carry both suitcases up the long narrow flight of stairs to our not so opulent apartment. The bedroom layout was so tight that both suitcases had to be left in the narrow hallway.

After checking in, we went for another big walk back to the docklands area of Dublin, eventually returning via a supermarket where we bought a chicken and ham salad pack and an early night to bed.