Cork (11/19)

One of the places we have wanted to visit is Cork.  It's about an hour away, and we lined up a few things to see in one trip.  Cork is one of the oldest cities in Ireland - like Waterford and Dublin it was one of the first Viking settlements.  But our trip wasn't really about history, it was just sightseeing.

And I think we went home thinking it was the most fun city we have visited yet.  Waterford was great, and Dublin is Dublin, but this just felt like a European city: the downtown is mostly pedestrians and very few cars or roadways, and there were lots of cute shops and markets.  Plus the weather was brisk (but dry) and there were Christmas decorations being put up (remember no Thanksgiving here).  So it just felt like a cozy European vacation (spoken by two people who have not really been to mainland Europe, but have seen lots of movies, like European Vacation). 

On the drive home from Cork we went to Barryscourt Castle, Fota Arboretum, and Fota Wildlife Park, with mixed success as described in pictures.

Welcome to Cork!

The River Lee.  On the bridge we met a nice Canadian (living in Ireland the last 10 years doing social media for companies) who gave us a bunch of recommendations.

Long shadows = we got there early!!

Another cute alley

Fun mural art

Pretty sure they stole this motto from Michigan.

If you are asking did you really go to a butter museum, then maybe this is the first blog post you have read.  You should go back to day one and catch up.  We didn't just visit a butter museum, we waited at these closed doors to be the first ones in (half joking).

Live, edible demonstration of butter making!  One ingredient: cream.  The wood stamps on the left were the butter branding back when many customers couldn't read.

Ireland arguably has the best butter in the world (and Cork was the butter exchange capital of the world for decades).  The cows are all grass fed, and the butter is a beautiful yellow color, full of beta carotene.  Butter struggled during the dietary fat=evil era, but has rebounded with more natural/moderate eating habits.

I always tell my students not to use the default graph settings in Excel '97.  I was also quite judgmental about the lack of units on the y-axis, but later on the tour I learned that Firkins is not a town but rather units of butter, like barrels, so I will allow it.

We stopped by a very nice museum/grave for Honora "Nano" Nagle, who was was an 18th century Irish Catholic religious sister who served as a pioneer of Catholic education in Ireland despite legal prohibitions (i.e., the anti-Catholic Penal Laws from the Anglican kings).  At age 57, she founded the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a.k.a. the Presentation Sisters, now a worldwide Catholic institute.

A neat piece of art.  Her impact on youth, education, and poverty were legendary.  She has been honored multiple times as the greatest Irish woman of all time.  She is two steps from sainthood.

We next visited the English Market, a busy indoor market.  This was one of several fresh seafood booths.

Sam enjoying some hot Irish stew in the market on a cold Irish day.  The rest of us had some delicious sushi.

We can all agree these are hobbits, right?

Random Irish building in the middle of town.  Google maps: Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral.  The grayscale shading was so sharp that it looked like a 3-D pencil drawing.

Atop Elizabeth Fort (which seems like phrasing odd), from which you can look over Cork.

A mural of Cork in Cork, on our way back to the car.

On our way home we had our first travel fail - turns out it closed up in August.

So instead we stopped by the Fota Arboretum, which was also closed but publicly accessible still.

In the walled garden

Cool green spaces

The Fota Wildlife Park was closed for the season, but we could still walk around the perimeter to see kangaroos and tigers (at too great a dark distance to photograph well).  This is an AI rendition of what we saw, which is pretty spot on.