Tynanwoods Day Six

October 19, 2006
Day Six: Stone forts and cigarette butts; the princess emerges

The day dawned gray and misty, perfect for wandering out on The Burren, so we headed toward the ringed stone fort of Caherconnell, halfway between Corofin and Ballyvaughn, and built by a local chieftain sometime between 400 and 1100 AD. Unlike the castle at Bunratty this was a ruin that stayed ruined -- just the bare limestone bones of a few buildings, and less than half of the rock walls that formed the perimeter of the fort. It was smaller than I'd expected, maybe 60 feet in diameter. It didn't take long to take in all that Caherconnell had to offer.

As usual with most of these things there was a recently built information center attached, with a gift shop, a nice little cafe, and an audio visual presentation. It's become clear Ireland pumped a huge amount of money into its tourist infrastructure sometime back in the '90s, and now it's trying to get it back from folks like us.

It was in the gift shop that we came up with a nickname for Ava: Princess Naputhaback. Every shop, every store, every vendor we come across, Ava picks up approximately a third of the place's inventory and says "can I have this, pleeeeaaaase?" And we'd say, 'no, put that back.' Hence the name.

From Caherconnell we hiked half a mile up the road to Poulnabrone, a megalithic burial tomb shaped strangely like the Greek letter Pi, only in three dimensions. There was a tour bus full of French teenagers scrambling over the rocks like ants after a picnic, and an Irish Tourist Board employee who spent his whole time shouting at them to get off the rocks. Cole and Ava spent most of their time leaping from limestone rock to limestone rock, of which there were about 10,000 per square kilometer, and climbing small cliffs. The Tourist Board employee probably would have shouted at them, too, only he was too busy complaining bitterly about the French and their cigarette butts.

From there we headed to Ennis for an Internet cafe and to see if we could scare up some of Xtina's cousins. We found the photography shop where her cousin Nora works and talked to Dick Young, the proprietor (and Nora's former husband), a nice man who knew all about the family but not much about Nora's present whereabouts. Xtina left her email address, and we went to go find out what Irish pizza tastes like (answer: not as bad as you might think).