Day One

Holy cow! What a plane trip - the flight got in about 7:45am, which wasn't quite 2am our time. We're running on about six hours of sleep between the four of us. Still, it's an awesome exhaustion. We landed in a heavy mist, but the fog had mostly burned off by the time we reached Newgrange. Built about 500 years before the pyramids, it's a megalithic burial mound that you enter via a passageway that is perfectly aligned with the rising sun once each year, on the Winter Solstice. That makes it one of the world's oldest astronomical calendars in the world.

And wouldn't you know it, we shared the tour with a family from Michigan! The dad was a professor on sabbatical from Michigan State, so Sam and I hassled him about screwing up our basketball brackets.

After picking up some lunch supplies at the local Aldi - yes, that Aldi - we set out for Belfast. It's nice that you don't have to go through Customs even though you're entering Great Britain. We didn't even see a sign saying, "Welcome to Northern Ireland." Belfast is interesting, a mix of new buildings packed in among the classical architecture. We checked in at our hotel, rested for a little while, then spent some time exploring the city center. We ate dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant in a kind of haze of sleep deprivation, but man was it delicious. Then it was back to our hotel to turn in early.

Lily's thoughts: pretty nice, warm weather. Her favorite thing so far: the interesting carvings on the stones of Newgrange. Quote: "Listening to these accents is really getting old."

Sam's thoughts: Newgrange was a very quiet, ninja-like place.

More tomorrow.