Food Note #3:
We ordered the traditional Irish breakfast, which was a big mistake. We should have learned from yesterday and just had cereal. You see, yesterday, when we ordered eggs for breakfast, the waitress scampered off so quickly, we didn't have a chance to tell her how we wanted our eggs. We found out today that if you order eggs, you'll get them poached.

Anyway, the traditional Irish breakfast comes with a heaping of mushrooms, which I can't stand, a spicy black half-circle that tasted sort of like corned beef hash, a round thing that looked like a sausage patty at first, then we noticed it was some oat-thing. Next on the plate was a tomato wedge. Everything we've eaten so far has come with a tomato wedge. I'm afraid to order ice cream. Anyway, after the tomato wedge was a batch of fried potato bits that had no taste. "Bacon" and that wood-filler they call sausage over here surrounded the requisite poached egg.

We went into town to exchange more American money for silly Irish money. They call them pounds or punts, depending on who you're talking to. The one pound coin says "punt" on it. So after getting a worse exchange rate than I did at the bank, we were off to run through The Burren.

The Burren is in the north part of County Clare. It is a region covered in limestone fields. Very neat. After seeing the Poulnabrone Dolmen, Tamara and I played "The Green Stuff is Lava" and hopped from fieldstone to fieldstone back to the road. Actually, I played that. Tamara played "Don't Drop The Expensive Camera On The Second Day of Our Vacation".

Our first top was Dysert O'Dea, an archaeological walk. Yet another of MacNamara's castles is here. His clan built 42 of the 84 castles/towers in Clare, and now we've seen three of them. We walked through a cow pasture (with all that entails) over to St. Tola's Church, the High Cross (you probably call them Celtic Crosses), the Round Tower at the church, and an abandoned building that had two trees growing in it.

If this place was in America, there'd be ropes all over everything, guards to keep people away from actually touching the old stuff, and a bus nazi to shout for us to get out of the river. But here, no. The face of Christ on the High Cross was removable until it was cemented in place back in the early 1900's. I'm certain that if it were removable, there would be written on the map "go ahead and climb the High Cross and pull out the face of the Savior. People used his head as a cure for toothache."

From there, we went to Corofin, but our meal there was very ordinary, so I shan't go into excruciating detail about it here. We stopped at a pottery place, but Tamara thought the stuff they had for sale looked like the same thing you can get in Taos (but was probably more affordable).

We drove up to see the Poulnabrone Dolmen, but turned off the road to check out the LongIrishName Cairn. We drove right by it without realizing that "cairn" simply means "rock". As there were rocks everywhere, I think this was understandable. Our travels took us down a twisty one-lane Irish road, which meant that it was a two-lane Irish road.

Culture Shock:
People drive the speed limit here not because they are afraid that the cops will give them a ticket, but because if they don't, they'll go flying off the twisty turny road and burst into flames. I don't think there is a police organization in Ireland.

We then went to Aillwee Cave, which is a long cave underneath Aillwee Mountain. There's a way cool waterfall halfway through the limestone cave and anyway we totally 0w3nd that cave. Oh, it was a real cave, not just some rocks placed next to each other. Anyway, after heavily tipping our cave guide so he would show us the way out, we emerged, blinking.

From there, we drove down to the Poulnabrone Dolmen; an item of interest that I was keenly looking for signs to guide us there. I needn't have bothered as we found our lane of traffic had been turned into an impromptu parking lot. For those of you at the RinkUnion 2, that highway we drove on from Manchester to the Old Rock in the Man, that is equivalent to this road, except in Ireland, the road is only two lanes wide, no divider, and no shoulder.

There is no parking lot for the Poulnabrone Dolmen ("dolmen", by the way, means "rock"), so we parked in the traffic lane and walked over to the thing. This whole thing would never work in America. First of all, it is three freestanding limestone slates holding up another limestone slate, like a table. That thing would have been covered in graffiti or collapsed by some drunken yahoos trying to push it over. Then the yahoos would have successfully sued the government for five bajillion dollars. The other thing was the donation box. It was just a blue milk carton sitting there for people to drop coins in. In America, you'd have several people say "hey -- free money for me!" and just grab the coins. Stupid Americans.

Anyway, we drove back down to Corofin and ate dinner at a nice place that had a harpist playing. We were drinking Harp in way cool Harp glasses. If I can find some for sale, I'm getting a pair.

The entire time I was in County Clare, I had "Planet Claire" by the B-52s running through my head.

Silly town names: Killnamora, Killinaboy, Ballyvaughn.

-FP