David took us today to see a wide variety of attractions, first in Cork, then in Cobh and finally back in Kinsale.
Our first stop out of town was Charles Fort. Back in 1601 the Spanish teamed up with the Irish against the British forces at the site of Charles Fort. The Spanish were unsuccessful. After King Charles II assumed power in England, a new fort was constructed on the site, starting in the 1670s. It was built in a star shape so as to deflect canon balls. While a clever state-of-the-art design, it was constructed at a place with higher ground behind it. It fell to besieging English forces in 1690. The Brits gave it to the Irish in 1921 as part of the independence agreement.
From there we proceeded northbound to the town of Cork, the second largest city (after Dublin) in the Republic of Ireland, third largest (after Belfast) on the island. Cork is a big bustling city that has as a main tourist attraction the English Market.
Judy and I have toured a bunch of markets in our day. They typically have stalls where vendors sell fruits, vegetables, meat and assorted other goods. The English Market was no different, but smaller in scale. It is, however, one of the cleanest markets with the freshest looking products we’ve ever seen.
In fact, Ireland, so far, is an extremely neat and tidy coutry. I’ve seen one scrap of paper on the sidewalk, in Dublin to date. And I saw that one only because a street cleaner was about to pick it up with his collection stick.
Next, the town of Cobh, home to a big cathedral and the Titanic Experience attraction. But first, lunch, sandwiches at a nearby hotel. Good eats and relaxing atmosphere. We’d purchased tickets for the 2 PM show; the timing was perfect.
The Titanic experience is housed in the building that was the White Star Company’s ticket office, the place from which the final 123 passengers embarked on the il-fated Titanic’s maiden voyage. The Titanic was in a hurry to set the record for transatlantic crossings, so the ship anchored offshore, and passengers transported by tender to the ship. The exhibit shows mockups of the boarding process, third- and first-class accommodations and a video simulation of the Titanic’s actual sinking.
As the Titanic movie suggests, third class accommodations were spartan but not too onerous. In fact, the most fun was to be had in third class with impromptu music and dancing sessions right up until the collision with the iceberg.
Incidentally, what is now Cobh was Queenstown in 1912. We were given boarding passes with the names of actual Queenstown passengers, and at the end of the show we looked up the fate of “our” passengers. Judy’s survived and died in the1950s. Nancy’s passenger survived but succumbed to pneumonia in 1919. My guy, the wife of Judy’s and the brother of Nancy’s, didn’t make it and is buried in Wisconsin.
St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh is the tallest church in Ireland. Planning started in 1867 but construction delays, disagreements and cost overruns caused the final consecration to drag out until 1919. It was intended to be the second tallest, behind St John’s Cathedral in Limerick, but later measurements of St John’s proved it to be shorter, falling to fourth place in the Irish cathedral parade.
David apologized for this being a downer day, but the next stop was at the Ringfinnan Garden of Remembrance. Kathleen Cate Murphy grew up in Kinsale but spent the last 40 years of her life as a nurse in New York City. There she had as a friend a priest who served the NYC fire department. After 911, she dedicated a plot of land she owned in Kinsale and developed it into a 911 memorial for the 343 NYC firemen who lost their lives on 911. Each firefighter is memorialized by a plaque with his picture, installed next to a tree dedicated to him. The plot of land has beautiful views of the surrounding farming hills and the town of Kinsale.
Finally, a brief drive by of the Lusitania Memorial. The Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine in 1915 during WW I about 12 miles off the coast at this point. Nearby is the 200-year-old Old Head Signal Tower, built to counter Napoleon’s failed attempt to invade England.
And not too much further away is the Old Head Golf Course, one Bill Kennedy would have loved to play. For me, it’s another downer, since I can only imagine the number of balls and penalty strokes I would accumulate, fruitlessly driving balls from one side of a chasm to the other.
Throughout the day we were treated to the magnificent countryside of Ireland. And the towns and cities are colorful and pleasing to the eye. I’ve tried to capture a bit of that beauty in the pictures.
With no plans for dinner, but a need to add some steps to our daily total, we walked the streets of Kinsale to the White Lady Inn. Scallops for the ladies and a fisherman’s pie and 8,125 steps for me.
Now that we know Kinsale a little bit, we’re leaving tomorrow for Killarney.
By the way, Comments on the blog pages should now be working!
Glad to revisit some places that we enjoyed in Ireland thru your wonderful writings!
Glad to light the fires of your memories!