My Quick History of Ireland

We started our Ireland touring heading south out of Dublin to Waterford and Kilkenny. We visited several castles along the way. Ireland is dotted with ruins of stone cairns, forts, castles, churches, towers and abandoned houses dating from the Bronze and Iron Ages (2500- 300 BC),

Newgrange stone tomb dating from 3200 BC

Walking around this huge burial mound ringed by 5 ton "kerbstones"

Dun Aengus was built on the edge of a 500 foot cliff

Aran Islands, Dun Aengus- 2,000 year old stone fortress  

The Celtic Culture, Viking Era, Norman Invasion, Medieval kingdoms from 500 BC to 1500s

Celtic burial stone

Trim Castle 

Used in the movie Braveheart

Cloister from a ruin of a monastic abbey

right up through the Potato Famine in 1855.  It has been quite a history lesson trying to understand and keep all this straight!

The Cill Rialaig these were a straight line of 1730's era homes abandoned during the famine. 

It is now a project to restore some of these for an artist in residence program

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Waterford, an important seaport on the southeast end of Ireland, is the oldest city being invaded by Vikings in 914 AD. We stayed with a great couple, Mary & Larry, who provided a quick immersion into the Irish accent, the passion of the national sport of Hurling, and the Irish breakfast!  They talked so fast we had to ask them to repeat many times!