My Weekend Part I: Meeting The Second Giant

CORK

Cork... the second biggest city in Ireland, but still a loooot smaller than Dublin. Maybe that's why I liked it better, I just felt more comfortable without having to take the bus everywhere and because on the second day I was already able to find my way to the city centre. As about Limerick, I had heard that it was not a very nice city, but that was not my impression. For me, there is only one adjective to describe Cork - COLORFUL... just like me :P

Every two steps you saw houses of many different colours, which I found really lovely. Another thought that came to my mind is that before visiting Cork I thought that Dublin was the city with most bridges I had ever seen (apart from Venice, of course), but I was mistaken. As you can see, the city is not flat like Dublin, but it has its hills and slopes. For the rest, I have to admit that when I was walking next to the river Lee I felt like in Dublin, it was so unbelievably similar to the Liffey… The only bad point I found was that it was slightly crowded with homeless people (you found people begging in every single corner…)

It might sound silly, but I really have to stress that we went there by train. It was the first time I took a real train (not a dart) in Ireland!!! We had reserved some sits on the Internet, so it was funny to get in the train and see that there were our names written. As usual, we arrived in Cork at lunchtime. We found the bed and breakfast more or less easily. I really recommend it to anyone who visits the city because it was looooooooovely (and one of the cheapest ones, by the way)! Don’t forget this name: Number Forty-Eight (of course, the address is 48 Glanmire Road). The owner, Jerry, was a charming Irishman who welcomed us as if we were honour guests and treated us in a really kind way. We really felt like at home.

After finding a place to eat something and leaving our stuff in the bed and breakfast, we headed for the city centre. At first we didn’t know much where to go, but we checked some brochures and we finally decided to go to the Cork Vision Centre. I’m glad that it was free admission, because the exposition there was not really interesting. I think the artist had some strange obsession with a particular kind of pictures. Anyways, we had the chance to get some more brochures so that we could decide what to do next.
We spent the first afternoon checking some nice places we found in the city centre. The first one was (church). The inside, which was golden, reminded me a lot of the cathedral in Venice. And of course, the typical statue of Saint Patrick was standing by the door.

The next thing we saw was the courthouse, which we found by chance. It might not sound special, but the building was standing there majestic and the inside was even better. The atmosphere had a feel of respect and elegance that cannot even be described in the pics.

Our next stop was the bird sanctuary. It’s a big park with a lake that has a small island in the middle. At first we thought we could go to the island, but then we realized that it was only for the birds. We saw lots of ducks, goose, ganders and swans (even black swans!) and then went for a little bit of hard stuff in the café next to the park (we never change…), which was very nice. Here are some pics of the birds:

And we also had the chance to take this wonderful photo of the sunset

It was starting to get late, so we had something for dinner in an Italian restaurant (of course!!!) and went back to the hotel. But before that, we had some more pics of the city at night.

Isn’t it beautiful? J

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