Twisty Viking Towns

Jennifer and I were first introduced to the concept of Viking-originated versus Roman-originated towns in York, England. York was occupied by both the Vikings and the Romans for significant parts of its founding history.   What we were taught (by Rachel - Hi Rachel!) is that Roman roads are straight.  Really straight.  Must've been good for the chariots or something, but they made straight, sturdy roads that facilitated transport of goods and troops by land.  The Vikings, however, apparently only made roads in towns.  They liked twisty little corridors with corners that facilitated disorganized brawls and guerilla combat.  The rest of the time I guess they were aboard ship or plundering nearby villages.  Probably villages with twisty little roads that were hard to defend.  Go figure.

So, this brings us to the Irish town Kinsale.  For the past few days we've been driving across the country passing through numerous villages and towns.  Most, like Kinsale, have a fairly chaotic layout that is actually really charming.  A few main streets (and sometimes ways, closes, slips, and alleys) are filled with brightly-painted storefronts.  The larger the town, the greater the chaos.  It's really a lot of fun.  

But, you can get lost easily (as a naive American tourist, anyway).  For example, consider the map below. From our Bed and Breakfast, Jen was advised that the grocery store was "just down the street, take a right then a left, and then it's right there". If you follow those directions as we did (below), you will arrive at an intersection with 23 twisty little streets along the 500 feet in between yourself and the grocer.  Oh, and you don't know where the grocer actually is, so good luck with that.  It's one of those cute little storefronts - possibly painted red.  

Although we had to dodge a couple of large metal chariots that really really do not fit on these streets (apparently the Romans had that part right), I'm just glad I wasn't impaled by some burly Nordic dude wearing horns on his helmet.