Brú na Bóinne

After getting up and having nice cooked breakfast I checked the sat nav and turned off yesterday's offending "Avoid Motorways" setting, so today should be more straight forward.
I had decided that we would go up to Newgrange, mostly because I hadn't been there in years and really wanted to go again. I had read that a new visitor centre was open and that all access to the site was through it. Undaunted, we typed "Newgrange" into the sat nav and visually confirmed where we were going and headed off.
Despite taking some very small lanes, the sat nav brought us directly to the passage grave at Newgrange. I parked just outside the old Visitor Centre and we looked at the buses and the neatly herded tourists. We headed up to the ticket office where we we offered a printed map with directions back to the visitor Centre in 6 languages. With no ambiguity we headed off, trusting enough in the printed instruction not to set the sat nav. After going through Slane were ended up a the new Visitor Centre, and again marvelled at just how busy it was. Since we wanted to see both sites, we were assigned seats on the 1515 Knowth and the 1645 Newgrange buses. Since it was only 1330 we had a bit to wait. We toured the centre, tested the tea room and eventually headed out for the bus.

Knowth is actually the larger and more impressive site. Yes Newgrange has the spectacular solstice alignment (Knowth has two passages aligned east and West but early work destroyed any possible sun box as in Newgrange) There are 19 tombs, with the other 18 arranged around the main one. Something like 80% of the world's megalithic art is on the site.
After spending an hour here we were bussed back to the centre for our second site visit.

After seeing Knowth, Newgrange is a bit of disappointment but still massively impressive. As the key passage grave in the region physically is on the highest local point and the quartz front shines in the morning sun. The lack of  satellite sites makes it look a bit empty, and you wonder if there is anything below the grass.
For the tourist, the key difference between here and Knowth is that you can go into the tomb itself. We were brought in and after moving to the end of the passage the guide treated us t a simulation of winter solstice morning with an electric light show. It really takes your breath away.