Second Verse, Same As The First

Well, if you didn't catch it, blogger went apeshit last week and lost a whole bunch of stuff. This was perfectly timed with the long winded, link laden post I had just made about my recent trip. I'll do my best to recall what I wrote, but I don't have it in me to go all out and recreate the original so I'm just going to blow through these pictures:

Tomb entrance at Newgrange, Valley of the River Boyne, Ireland. Newgrange is part of the Brú na Bóinne complex of megalithic tombs. These would be the oldest man made structures I have ever seen (they predate the pyramids-not that I've seen those), they are astrologically aligned and contain much of the existing megalithic stone art in the world. This is the only tomb in the complex that you can enter all the way back to the burial chamber.

Knowth, Valley of the River Boyne, Ireland. Unlike Newgrange which is one large tomb, this is a whole complex of smaller tomb mounds with one larger mound. They actually have it set up so you can climb onto the top of the largest mound like people would have when it was in use. There's also tons of stone carving art here.

At the Rock of Cashel in Cashel, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. This place was amazing and crow infested and had pretty much everything I like all at once. That's me really tiny.

The ruins of the Hore Abbey, also in Cashel, Co. Tipperary. We had this pretty much to ourselves at dusk to scramble around and climb on and poke around the cemetery.

Virgin Mary statue in an Irish Cemetery.

"Aideen's Grave" a dolmen in the middle of a forest filled with huge tree height rhodedendrons, weirdly situated next to a golf course in Howth, Ireland.

Here's a crappy secret photo of the vault at St. Michan's in Dublin, Ireland, where bodies interred there in stacked coffins were naturally mummified because of the conditions in the crypt. It was here that a guide offered us an opportunity to TOUCH THE MUMMY of a crusader (for luck?!). Mike and I pretty much climbed over each other to get to it. They also have the execution order and bodies of participants of the 1798 Rebellion there.

Impressive Gothic vaulted ceiling of the abbey in Bath, England. It had a really weird unique carved facade I couldn't get a good picture of also, but check it out here.

The head of the Sulis Minerva statue from the Roman Bath ruins in Bath, England. One of my favorite things at this site was the folded metal plates with curses scratched into them that were found in the baths. People would write curses against people who wronged them and throw them into the bath in order to seek vengeance from the goddess.

The crypt at St. Leonard's Church in Hythe, Kent, England. This place was pretty amazing and neatly maintained. One of the skulls had a birds nest in it! We actually got here on the day of a wedding and had to wait for someone to let us into the crypt before the last bus out of the town left, and ended up lurking hard while the couple were taking their wedding photos.

Another picture from the crypt because it was so cool.

Anyway, I've been back for a bit now and finished up a tshirt design I'll post in full later this week. Here's a quick little sneak preview of it: