Cork is still a mystery to me. It is in all of the tour books; it is a major city. I had read that there was a Summer Solstice festival the second week that we were in Ireland. We had tried twice to get there … once was derailed due to rain; the other, a hurling match. Third time was the charm.
As I reflect, our first week was spent in smaller town and villages. We struggled with Dublin and did the same with Cork. It took us a couple of attempts to get parked; wrong lanes were taking us the wrong direction. Once we were parked and bought a ‘parking disk’; we were good to go.
As Kay says, always head towards the church. It became a good way to start exploring the city. Cork was not any different. After Holy Trinity Church, we headed towards the area that was to house the festival. Oops … no festival. The area for outside vendors was empty. It was a miss.
The other place that I had read about was the English Market. We headed that direction and found an entrance down a small alley. We had been in Ireland for almost ten days and I was still looking for Irish linen. This sounded like the perfect place. Ummm…. another miss. The English Market is basically a meat, fish and produce market. There was not any Irish linen in sight.
From there, we walked through the city centre area. It consisted of four to five blocks of shops; ranging from a department store to speciality shops. We found our first Butler’s chocolate shop … I will be hauling a box of chocolates 3,500 miles for my mother. We also found another candy shop. I am beginning to become intrigued with the number of these that we are seeing.
Evening was beginning to arrive, but in our continued desire to maximize daylight, we pulled out that handy, dandy map. Blarney was on a few miles northwest of Cork. Surely, we could fit this in yet today.
Location via Google Maps:
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