Claire Blogs Day 8: "Listen, Kanye was out of line, but he kind of had a point, and GAGA WAS ROBBED."

I'm pretty zonked, so I will replace attempts at wittiness with Pretty Pictures.

Holy moly, we slept well last night! It broke my heart a little bit to leave the Ballinalacken Castle House, given the beautiful views, comfortable beds, delicious food, and fine treatment we received there, but so it goes. We had a delectable breakfast and went on our way. This is a picture of the Castle House, complete with Castle:

We spent a windy morning exploring more of the Burren, which includes a number of prehistoric sights of interest as well as several castles and churches. We did not come near to hitting them all, but we did put in a valiant effort.

We started with the Kilfenora high crosses:
We moved on to a stone fort, circa 1000 AD:
Astonishingly enough, there is no mortar involved in the construction of the walls, which are significantly higher than I am tall. The fort came complete with an audio-visual presentation with an animated component that looked straight out of the Sims, Medieval Edition.

Next stop was the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a sacred burial site from...the Bronze Age? Can't remember:
We continued North to the Newtown Castle, 15th century, recently restored, and notable for being round, yet with a square base:
Did you know that the King of England incentivized the construction of castles in that era by giving 10 pounds to anyone that built one? The program was so popular the amount eventually had to be halved. Clearly the man was planning for economic future of Ireland by getting the tourist sites built early. Obama should take note.

Our last non-lunch non-gas stop before driving in earnest was at the ruins of Corcomroe Abbey, which was perhaps my favorite:
Along the way, we were also afforded numerous spectacular views of the countryside itself:
(that's the reflection of the sky in that there pond.)
(that's a mountain made of limestone.)

And then we drove back. As Emily mentioned, the Irish treatment of the "motorway" is interesting. It is VERY CLEARLY MARKED, almost to the point that you wonder if the engineers are a little worried, like, maybe this motorway thing is too confusing for a country of people accustomed to driving on roads with sufficient lateral space to accommodate 1.5 cars, maximum. The signage is superlative, and warn super far in advance of all oncoming hazards, exits, junctions, tolls...the only problem is, they still don't mark the presence/locations of gas stations, so we spent some time driving aimlessly around small towns in the center of Ireland. Can't win 'em all.

I find the Irish speed limit thing pretty mysterious. It's usually 50-60 km/hr in towns and 100 everywhere else. Well, except for the motorway, where it's 120, but that's fine. 100 km/hr is 62 mph, and "everywhere else" usually refers to narrow narrow roads that are windy, to boot. On the bright side, people never speed, but I think that that's because most cars don't have the handling required. It's easy to solve a speeding problem if you make it necessary to violate the laws of physics in order to exceed the posted limit.

We spent much of the drive to Dublin listening to Em's iPod. Country music was quite appropriate, since the Irish seem to really like it. It also allowed us to argue about the merits of Taylor Swift. Navigating the city was much easier this time around. Something about a decent map, more left-side-of-the-road practice, and sleep.

And now, as promised, back to the hostel life. Tomorrow promises a few more Dublin sites of interest, and then, sadly, our adventure must come to an end, we must return to work, and our travel blog will have to wait until our next adventure commences...