I Corcaigh in éineacht le Muintir

I received a phone call around 2.00pm, which in itself was strange since I usually get text messages rather than actual calls, to find that my parents were already lost in Cork, standing outside the Waterstone’s on Patrick Street borrowing someone’s cell phone in order to contact me. I lugged on my shoes and headed out to greet them for the first time in three months. Really, not much had changed, but I had forgotten mom’s penchant for wearing fleece jackets and dad’s grey beard.

It had been a long drive from Dublin airport that morning and hard time finding me, much less their B&B, so we found the car parked over Tesco and went in search of the small, but comfortable B&B by the train station where my parents had a room. After a much needed nap (on all sides) we finally received a call from Barbara and David who had arrived in Cork as well, after an extra night in Dingle.

We met for dinner at a place called Bully’s by the Tesco- an area ripe with small café’s and restaurants that I have to admit I have rarely explored. It was a pleasant meal as we planned the next day, repeat with Cork’s most famous sights.

In truth, Cork’s not a very touristy city, and I like this about it. Whereas in Dublin tourist busses and people with cameras are a common sight, in Cork there’s not much more than the Beamish & Crawford Brewery (which was not open for tours yet) or the Butter Museum (yes, it does exist.) So we went up to see the UCC campus, fresh and green in the coming spring, and all the things contained therein; the Honan Chapel’s famous mosaic floors and the Gluckman Gallery’s newest exhibition, the quad and the seal and the Ogham Stones that line the hall of the Alus Maximus.

Afterwards we drove back into the city to see the English Market and buy loaves of fresh bread and scones and eat lunch at the FarmGate, a café situated over on a terrace, overlooking the market fountain. It was a good meal, but to top it off I decided to show then O’Conaill Chocolatier- famous around Cork for their supurb melted hot chocolate (my favorite being the dark chocolate) complete with little chocolate-pieces and enough to fill you up even if you haven’t just eaten a full lunch. Gourmet dessert in a glass.

After an afternoon nap around the apartment, and a though cleaning of the kitchen by mom, we ate that evening at the Boqureia, a trendy little tapas place over the north river. While the seating was minimal, the wine was good, as was the food, salmon tartar and all. After dinner we took to find a pub where we could continue the evening, eventually wandering into a place a bit down the road for a final drink before we parted to get some sleep, ready for tomorrow’s journey.

While Barbara and David’s trip was over, mom and dad’s had just begun. The journey up to Galway took me back past the Cliffs of Moher and Poulnabrone on the Burren, this time the day being warm and sunny. From there we wound up to Galway where we stopped at our next B&B before heading out to dinner. It was amazing how much of the city I remembered after merely a weekend there three months before, but at the same time I had walked much of the city, again and again, and in the coming spring it was brighter, but still very much the same.

Flowers blooming at the Cliffs of Moher.

We took time in Galway to tour the Connemara, stopping at Kylemore Abbey along the way. The country was greener in the spring, although still holding on to visages of brown grass on the hillsides. At the abbey the gardens were now open, and while the plants weren’t yet at peak, it still had spots of color, the brick walls enclosing the perfectly planned grounds while beyond the mountains rose to the sky, overcast but not raining. I love the Victorian atmosphere of Kylemore, and while the glass houses are no longer standing the gardens retain much of that style. Grandiose and styled.

Purple lantern flowers at Kylemore Gardens.

We wound back around the Connemara, seeing the country, around the Twelve Bens, and back to Galway. It’s really an all-day trip, but when we returned we took a drive around the city square and went for dinner at a pub/restaurant near the shopping corner, where the same pedal-cars were available for hire as in February, and minimal crowds hung around the doors to pubs in the usual haze of cigarette-smoke and conversation. It is things like this that I will miss most about Ireland.

The next day was spent cutting across the Irish interior on the way to Dublin. New highways are a fine addition to the Irish infrastructure, but they are few and far-between, so small roads showed us the way, with minor stops to see if any of a number of minor Irish castles were open since mom had never been in one before. We stopped at two, but were out of luck thanks once again to the unopened tourist season, and while seeing them from outside was beautiful, it was not the full castle experience.

Around 2.00 we rolled into Dublin, which is quite frankly a small city all things considered- smaller even than Baltimore- but still the largest in Ireland and full of traffic. Passing the Guinness Brewery, we pulled up to the bus station I remembered so well from my previous weekend there. Managing to catch the 2.00 bus, I said goodbye to my parents and wished them well on their final two days in the country, touring Dublin city, while I took the four-hour ride back to Cork to prepare for my upcoming journey to the Continent.

Go Raibh Maith Agat Gaillimh.

More so than Killarney, or even Cork, Galway is an upscale little city on the west coast of Ireland, about a four-hour drive from Cork by bus. We arrived Friday night to tour the city a bit before deciding our plans for the weekend, when we ran into a few of our flatmates up for the weekend as well. We spent the night at a chic little pub called “The Living Room” before headed back to our room about midnight to decide what to do.

In the end we spent Saturday touring Connemara National Park, situated to the north and west of Galway proper. It’s an expansive region, and sparsely populated except by small outcroppings or individual houses stationed near the numerous lakes and rivers cutting into the region from the sea. In the spring and summer I imagine the mountains to be green and bright, but this time of year everything carried a brown pallor in conjunction with the overcast sky. It was cold here, being farther north, and the change was noticeable.


Ireland's only fjord, in the Connemara.

We stopped for lunch at a small pub along the route, famous for its appearance in the 1989 movie “The Field,” starring Richard Harris, a legacy the pub holds on to firmly. Afterwards we wound north to the main attraction of our journey, Kylemore Abbey, a large, right stone estate, both Benedictine Abbey and girl’s school. Now with just 25 students, there is talk of the estate being sold again. It started as a mansion in 1867, built by Mitchell Henry and sold to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester in 1903, only to be sold again, less than 20 years later, to the Benedictine Nuns who now own it.

It’s a massive stone structure, ornately decorated, sitting on the very edge of the lake and surrounded completely by the Connemara. It’s a wonder how Henry found the spot in the first place, it being fifty miles from Galway proper and lodged firmly between two very large groupings of mountains. It’s really a spectacular sight. Here we toured what bit of the mansion was accessible and then went down to the chapel and from there to the mausoleum, all the while taking a beautiful walk along the lake with the precipice of the mountainside towering over us on the left-hand side. It was the first time I got a real feel for the natural landscape of Ireland.

On Sunday we opted to go in the other direction- West. The Aran Islands are a group of three outlying rocks, some of the furthest most west pieces of land in Europe. An hour-long bus ride found us at the dock where we were ferried to Inis Mór, the largest of the islands, being about 12 miles square. There we rented bikes and toured it ourselves. Here you can see the bedrock that makes up not only these islands, but Ireland as a whole. Like much of Co. Claire, the island was lined with hundreds of rock-walled pastures spreading down to the shore. Here is where hundreds of year ago farmers hauled sand and seaweed up from the beach to line their paddocks, making them better for growing plants and pasturing animals. What remains are lopsided but sturdy walls and the rather frequent stone skeleton of a thatched-roof house. Animals are still kept here, cows and ponies, as well as a wealth of chickens and the occasional cat.


A friend we met on Inis Mór.

We went along the shore for a good hour and a half, just stopping at beaches and picking up rocks. The stone here is pocked and brittle and although the day was abnormally warm and clear, I can imagine the wet, cold sea the island must usually see. After awhile we wound up to the Seven Churches- a cropping of seven ruined churches on the hillside. Here was also a cemetery, and a very recent one at that, where people still came to mourn.

We took a wrong turn and ended up missing the second side of the island, instead biking right through the center and catching some wonderful vistas from the top. Late in the day we caught the ferry out, and then the bus back to Galway, but upon arriving in Galway we found out the last bus back to Cork had departed at 6:00pm, and that we had missed it by roughly an hour.

Out of ideas, we ate dinner at Supermac’s- a conglomeration of fast food that even America has yet to top- and spent the night in the comparative luxury of a Travelodge. Catching the 7:00am bus this morning, we finally stumbled into Cork at 11am, tired, smelly, and glad to be back.


Looking towards the beach at Inis Mór.