Honeymoon Journal

A very long -- but wonderful -- day. We stopped in Ennis on the way from Doolin to Limerick and walked around the city, which is wonderfully cute. We saw the friary and were sad that all the festival activities were in the evening; had some been going on, we would probably have stayed. We had wanted to pass through Limerick to the Dingle Peninsula that day, but we found out that the night we had wanted to catch a madrigal at Bunratty Castle was booked up (being Saturday, duh). Luckily, there was an opening for that night and we snatched it up. We saw King John's castle in Limerick (so called because he had it built, not because he ever actually lived there), which they are trying to restore to include its original courtyard; as a result, they had a neat excavation site that exposed the original walls and battlements. We got to walk up into the towers, hammer out pewter coins in the basement, and see the dungeon (and were subjected to a melodramatic "historical" movie, filled with quite a lot of the expected "damnable British fiend" lines).

On the spur of the moment, since Tom wanted to see the Rock, we made a special trip out to Cashel -- which ended up being one of the best legs of the entire vacation. It was one of the more intact cathedral ruins, with a "live" burial ground and Celtic crosses. It also allowed a gorgeous view of the countryside, so we walked back down through the wooded "Bishop's Walk" and almost got pleasantly lost. We found a bed and breakfast on the road out to Bunratty, dropped off our stuff, and drove out a little early to the castle to see the empty theme park. The whole thing was painfully touristy; about 9/10 of the people there were touring Americans. It felt very much like a high-school Madrigal, but provided a passable meal (and mead) and was good fun in a cheesy sort of way. It was also nice to discuss vacations with the other tourists, most of whom were finishing up their trips. We got home late that night and collapsed.