Put a Cork in it........

Sunday, March 16 2008

On our last day in Cork, we got up and had a full Irish Breakfast at the B&B we were staying at before heading into town. Everything was very quiet on Sunday morning, so we got a chance to go see many of the sites that we wanted to without worrying about a crowd. Our first stops were St. Patricks Catholic Church, Trinity Presbyterian Church, and St. Mary's Dominican Priory (you can hardly turn around in Cork without seeing a church.) We then walked over to the Cork Craft Center and St. Ann Shandons, which is also known as the "four-faced liar" since it has a clock on each side of the tower and the times on all of them don't always match up.

Greg with the Beamish brewery in the background



The four faced liar


We continued to walk through town, enjoying all of the colorful houses and buildings like the Cork Vision Center and Bishop Lucey Park which had a really nice crane fountain. We also went by the Beamish Brewery and I was surprised to see a Miller flag flying above the building.

St. Finnebarre's Cathedral


We then walked over to St. Finnbarre's Cathedral which had beautiful architecture and statues before walking over to Elizabeth Fort. On the way, we saw a really funky crane sitting on the wall, which was more exciting than the actual Fort. Afterwards, we headed down to the Red Abbey, which consists of the ruins of an Abbey that used to be on the site, and saw a small church that had a cute bell in the bell tower.

We then continued our tour of downtown by heading over to Holy Trinity Church, Parliament and some of the bridges in the area leading over to the National Monument, which would have been more impressive if they weren't doing repairs in the area which required them to put barricades around the actual monument. We walked by yet another cool looking church near Paul Street, and saw the Father Mathew Statue at St. Patricks Street.

Holy Trinity Church


One of the bridges around town


After we had seen pretty much everything we wanted to see, we went to the small street market that was up for St. Patricks Day and had a hot chocolate (since it was cold). We walked around and looked at all of the vendors, then headed over to Clancy's, the oldest pub in Cork, for a drink and a little relaxing. After that, we headed back to the market and grabbed some lunch from the street market.... a tomato and cheese crepe for Tami and a toasted ham and cheese panini for Greg. While we were there, we also saw some people who had decorated their bicycles as animals and were driving them around, as well as some singers and a puppet show (which wasn't as creepy as you would have expected.) After that, it was time to collect our luggage and head to the airport to come back home.

One of the animal bikes roaming around the city