Day 12: Cobh, Cork, & Kinsale

Although we are staying in the outskirts of Cork city Center, we chose to explore the smaller surrounding towns of Cobh and Kinsale. We headed for Cobh first, we wanted to hop on the ferry to go out to Spike Island. However, the timing did not work for us because we also had tickets to the Titanic experience. The Titanic experience was much different than the Titanic museum that we visited in Belfast. For those who do not know, Cobh was the last port of call for the passengers of the Titanic. The experience is quite neat in the fact that you are given a ticket when you enter with the name of someone who actually boarded on April 11 at that same port. At the end of the experience, you can see if your person survived or not. I had Ellen Shine (20 years old at time) and Francene had Katie McCarthy (24 years old at time). The experience was interactive and made you feel like you were really on the ship. We are both happy to say that we both survived! Ellen was alive until 1993 and is buried in New York. She is on record as the longest living Irish woman from the Titanic. I’m strongly considering taking a ride to see her grave at some point this summer. 

The rest of Cobh was beautiful and one of my favorites. So many doggies too!!


















From there we headed to Cork City Center to explore The English Market. It took us a bit to find a parking area because the city was quite busy, once we found a garage we then took a bit to find the actual English Market. We may have walked by it a few times before we realized the sign 😂 The Market was cool, but the city center was similar to NYC and seemed dirty to me. Not my favorite!









We actually didn’t even take many photos while in Cork Center…you’ll have to take my word for it that it wasn’t grand!

It was only 3:30 at this point and we didn’t have any desire to stay in Cork, but also didn’t want to go back to the hotel at such an early time so we decided to head to Kinsale. So glad we did! Another quaint harbour town, we stopped into the Mead Distillery for a tasting then meandered into the town for dinner. We ended up finding The White House, which had connections to Newport, RI. In fact, Kinsale and Newport are known as “sister cities”! Fun fact!












Tomorrow, we head to Kilkenny to our last accommodation before spending our last night at a hotel close to the airport.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 2 & 3: Dublin & Belfast

Image
 Well…there was no post yesterday if you are keeping notes. Let’s recap here: Saturday, June 15: We woke up around 9:00 and took our time getting ready for the day - it was “festival day”! Bloomsday is June 16 but the festivals happen over a series of days in the city. We planned to stop into the Bloomsday James Joyce festival in the morning and then head to the Taste of Dublin festival in the afternoon. Instead, we decided to hop on the Hop On, Hop Off bus tour and get to know the city of Dublin better! We are so glad we did—-the guides were all wonderful and we got to see literally everything. We hopped off and on a few times. We booked the Book Of Kells experience at Trinity College for 6:00pm (only time slot available when we stopped in around 11:00), then we hopped off and had a tour and tasting of Jameson’s Distillery triple distilled whiskey. The history lesson was quite interesting even for the non whiskey drinker! It was also much different than the Guinness Storehouse tour fr
Read more

T-9 days...single digit countdown!

Image
 Our fellowship commences in just 9 days. Wow! After all of the long days and longer evenings of planning, writing, planning, writing, planning (you get the idea!!) it all will come to fruition. We cannot wait to use this platform to share our travel stories with you. Our itinerary is well stocked, our rental car is waiting, our self trainings on road safety have been completed, and our bags are packed (almost!) Please follow along and explore Ireland with us! Just a glimpse of a messy desk planning session! Coffee Shop Post Acceptance Planning Session! We almost drew stick figures in this photo - but instead we will leave it up to our readers' imaginations to picture us here!!! We will find a herd of sheep to recreate this photo opportunity!
Read more

Day 13: Rock of Cashel and Kilkenny

Image
We woke up this morning, enjoyed our last hotel breakfast, then hopped in the car and headed for the Rock of Cashel. The first leg of our drive put us on the motorway. It was nice to have the faster driving since we hadn’t had that since our first and second day however, we have gotten quite used to the smaller roads and actually enjoy the scenery more. So, we decided that once we arrived at the Rock, we would click “avoid highways” on maps for the rest of our journey to Kilkenny. The Rock of Cashel did not disappoint! Such beauty and really engaging stories to hear from guides and read about on sign markings. We had some fun with the walking man on the sidewalk. Someone working on the grounds saw us laughing and taking the photo and asked to see it which prompted the conversation of what is a Fund For Teachers fellow? We enjoyed telling our story for the over 50th time! It never gets old to us! And it always leads into recommendations of what we need to do while we are here from local
Read more