Into Drogheda

I slept. And slept. And slept. Apparently I'm Jay's hero, because he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. And then he got up at 7:30, showered, and got ready to go to work. I know this because he provided me with a running commentary throughout this despite the fact that my face was buried in a pillow and the most response he ever got from me was a muffled "mrmph." Eventually he went away, but at 10 he insisted I get up. He was probably right, but I felt like I still could have slept for another couple hours. I had instant coffee, cooked us some eggs, and Jay continued to work while I played with photos on my computer. Around noon, Jay decided to take a long lunch and we went into Drogheda. The plan was to walk around and see what we could see, though in Jay's words, we had to go see "the dead guys head." More on that below.

(Side note: Driving was much easier and much less scary. This could be due to acclimation, but in reality, it's probably due to SLEEP.)

The tourism center, believe it or not. 

We found parking and walked toward West street, where the church is. We stumble across the Tourism Center, which does NOT look like a tourism center by the way. The lady in there helped us find a map that would work for us and gave us some tips for visiting Newgrange (tomorrow's adventure). Then we headed to the church.

St. Peter's Cathedral. Turns out, I don't have a wide-enough angle lens.
Pretty cool looking anyway.

St. Peter's Cathedral in Drogheda is a gigantic and beautiful building with all the elaborate décor that old catholic churches tend to have. But its real claim to fame is that is houses a holy relic: the head of St. Oliver Plunkett. Oliver Plunkett was the last victim of the Popish Plot, which based on a quick perusal of Wikipedia seems like a 17th century, anti-Catholic version of McCarthyism (though deadlier). St. Oliver was the last Catholic martyr killed on English soil. He is the patron saint of Peace and Reconciliation in Ireland. He's also our friend Oliver's patron saint (which we only found out after visiting the church). I know enough about relics that I expected it to be so encased in gold and decorations that it wouldn't be recognizable. Nope. I was wrong. That's a head. Looks like his portrait.

The church was beautiful but not particularly touristy, and there were a few people in there who were clearly praying, so I didn't take my camera out. It also seemed pretty disrespectful to take a picture of a dead man's head. Fortunately, Wikipedia obliged.

That is, indeed, a head. (Wikipedia)

After visiting the church we walked around a little more and found a Tesco. We found food for our next couple of meals (including some gluten-free bread that isn't awful!). I'm two for two on my cashier needing to search around for a pen once they ran my card. I think this will be a common theme. We then walked to St. Laurence's Gate, which was built in the 13th century and is considered one of the finest of its kind in all of Europe.

St. Laurence's Gate

A quick walk back to the car, then my offline GPS app on my phone pointed us home. Jay's working again, and I'm SERIOUSLY fighting the urge to nap.