i should mention, however, that before doing this, we discovered that the irish aren't into football or rugby as much as they are obsessed with hurling. it took us a while to translate hurling from an irish accent to an american accent and for a while thought we were talking about curling. and were even more confused when it was explained that the championships were happening in the middle of the summer. eventually we figured out that the kilkenny team was already guaranteed a slot in the finals and that tipperary would be playing limerick on sunday. as we were driving through both kilkenny and tipperary, we got a lot of updates on this match. but still have no clue what is involved with hurling.
anyway. so we started driving northwest, making for lorrha. it was there that we were to trace our roots in the form of redwood castle, home to the MacEgan clan!
it was a pretty cool place. in the 60s, a local egan had fixed the place up from the ivy-covered cow shelter that it had become, and before he died, he would even live there for a few months of the year, opening it up to tourists at other times.the clan used to be lawyers and were known by at least one historian as "birds in the forest of wisdom," which katie and i quite liked.
after we were done at our castle, our google directions had us heading to galway. instead, we decided to make a few pitstops on the way. first, we figured we would go to the burren. being the prepared travelers that we obviously are, despite the fact that we were going on a road trip, we did not take this as a sign that we should acquire a map of the country. i mean, google maps counts right? luckily the car rental people had our back and had given us one. on this map, there was about a square inch area which had only two unnumbered roads running through it, which crossed in the middle at the town of carron. across this space, there was written "the burren." so, we set off from the castle with little idea of where we were going and even less of what we were looking for, vaguely driving toward this space.
as usual, we found some ruins along the way and stopped to look.
as we wound our way toward the burren, we got more and more lost
until eventually we were driving on "roads" with grass growing in the middle and cows unfenced on the side of the road. which is totally a big deal. we started following signs for something called "the burren way" thinking this looked hopeful. turns out this is actually a hiking trail. because the burren is actually a national park. important things that would have been useful to know. it didn't help that we had sor of been playing the "this would make a great horror film setting" game. or that it looked like it might rain. or that we were half convinced the car was going to get a flat tire or break and axel or something.
eventually, we started doing switchbacks up a hill and ended up here!
after stopping to ask for some directions from an irish family with approximately eight children, all in tow, we escaped. and couldn't get out there fast enough.
next stop: the cliffs of moher.
this drive was relatively straightforward. despite not being any better labeled on our handy map, it was at least a distinct site, rather than an area. we got there, relatively no problem and found these beautiful cliffs where ireland stops and the atlantic starts.
after the cliffs, we realized that we had been in the car for close to eight hours. it was time to high tail it to galway.
as we made our way down the R roads, we began fantasizing about what the N road that we would eventually reach would hold for us. reasonably wide lanes? painted lines? a shoulder on the edge of the road? maybe even lights! no, that might be too much to ask. this wasn't sarcasm. this was earnest hope. a few hours on the R roads and we were ready to take anything that we could get. eventually, we made it to galway, where we settled into our second unusually awesome hotel, the most notable feature of which was the ceilings that were so high the crown molding was three feet thick.
we had dinner at a little place that we found that seemed suitably organic and therefore vegetarian friendly. our waitress gave us the suggestion that we should head to a bar a few blocks away. she was sure that even though it was a sunday, things would be lively. the only problem with this suggestion was that we could not, for the life of us, figure what the name of the bar was! katie had heard "rasheen dove" and i had heard "russian duck". although we asked a few times hoping to get the name right, we were completely baffled. we tried to follow her directions to no avail. we went back the way we came. we consulted the map. we got distracted when we noticed the "tourist landmark" of the spanish arch. expecting something along the lines of the arc d'triumph, or even the marble arch, we were highly disappointed to find out it was just a part of a former shipping warehouse (or at least, i was). more a hallway than an arch. although technically an arch shape. we settled on another bar. we asked around. we retried. and we succeeded.
the actual name was the "roisin dubh" and we hadn't been able to figure out what the woman was saying because she was saying something in gaelic. we still aren't sure what it means but suspect it has something to do with a rose. there was a sweet band playing though and the woman was right, we had a good time.
the next morning, we ran by the cathedral and through the university. after showers but before free breakfast, we documented the size of our bathroom.
then we hit the road for dublin.
we had a 2pm appointment to make!
