Our second day in Cork was Tuesday, September 29. We didn't really have much on the agenda for that day. Our buddy Rick (Steves) suggested a few sights in Kinsale, which is roughly 45 minutes south of Cork. Neither of the sights sounded particularly worth the hassle of moving the car, so we decided to take a leisure day. When we were planning this trip one thing that was important to us was having down time and having time to relax, not constantly feeling like we were rushing from one sight to the next, so this was actually perfect for us.
We started the morning waking up leisurely and wandering out for some "breakfast" around lunch time. We went back to one of the pubs we went to the night before called The Oliver Plunkett and Ryan got his usual (fish and chips-now for breakfast!) and I had a chicken and chorizo pie, accompanied by some delicious breakfast pints.
Once our meal was done we started to wander across town towards the university campus. Along the way we took in some Cork scenery. We walked through the Bishop Lucey Park and then crossed over the River Lee to admire the Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral. The cathedral belongs to the Church of Ireland and had beautiful architecture from the 1800s.
After looking around the church we continued to make our way down to University College Cork. The campus was absolutely stunning with lots of fall foliage on display. The neighborhoods around the campus were your typical college area and we saw lots of students hanging out between classes in the quad. It did make me feel slightly old, and I wondered what I would have thought of some random foreign tourists stopping to take pictures all over my college campus.
As we made our way back towards town we visited the remants of the Elizabeth Fort. Thankfully free to enter, there really wasn't much to it. We climbed up to the top level and got some nice views of the city around us and the houses on the distant hills, but there really wasn't much else going on.
After all this walking we were obviously getting quite thirsty. We walked over to the English Market area to peruse the stalls. The English Market is a large, covered food market where you can find everything from baked goods to fresh eggs, lots of fresh produce and plenty of butcher stands with seemingly every kind of meat imaginable. Next door to the market is the Mutton Lane Inn, another of Cork's heritage pubs. The building seemed ancient and was lit almost entirely by candles. We enjoyed pints of Beamish and plotted our next moves.
We decided to run back to the hotel for a bit to rehydrate (with actual water) and put our feet up for a bit. Once we were recharged a bit we headed back out for another heritage pub stop, The Oval. After pints of Murphy's at The Oval we decided we were getting a bit hungry. We found a place called the Cornstore, which looked to have some decent items on the menu. They claimed to be the number 1 rated cocktail bar in Ireland, and seemed to think this made it acceptable to charge €13.50 for an old fashioned. Um, no. Sorry. I settled instead for a Stonewell cider, which turned out to a great pick. It is a dry craft cider from just down the road in Kinsale, where the apples go all the way from the tree to the bottle. Delicious. For dinner Ryan had a quinoa salad and the cod special. I had the fishcake and "crab toes" (just the tip of the claw, basically) and curry chicken. My curry was pretty good, but everything else was just OK. Coupled with how pretentious the place seemed, we were overall unimpressed. Oh well, at least it filled our bellies.
Following dinner we walked across the River Lee to a heritage pub called Sin é, which in Gaelic means "that's it" in reference to the funeral home next door. They are supposed to be well-known for their trad sessions, but unfortunately the session didn't start until 21:30 and Ryan's stomach was upset. We decided to call it an early night and headed back to the room to pack up and rest before our drive to Dingle in the morning.
When morning arrived we got ourselves all packed up and ran out for a few more groceries to take to Dingle with us. We got a quick lunch in the lobby of our hotel and got on the road. It was Ryan's turn to drive again, and he said this drive was actually quite nice for him. Not much traffic, generally easy roads and incredible scenery. As we navigated the roads leading us out onto the Dingle Peninsula we were in awe of the beautiful rolling hills, the green countryside and the harbour waters outside our windows.
We pulled into the outskirts of town, and even though Google maps did try to get us lost AGAIN, we outsmarted her with real directions from the owners of the B&B we were headed for. Take that, you crazy hooker. Like Ryan said, I don't know what it is, but the navigation does just fine all the way up until we get close to our destination, and then she just loses her shit. Anyway, we pulled into the parking lot of the B&B and were immediately in love. The place is called the Greenmount House and it is perched on a hill overlooking the city of Dingle and the harbour with its marina. Hills and cliffs and mountains and just...too beautiful to even put into words. On top of this, the family who runs the place are incredibly sweet and immediately welcomed us with coffee, cookies and cakes in our room. I could totally get used to this. The view from our room is incredible, and we spent probably the first 30 minutes or so taking a million pictures and selfies so we could show everyone back home just what they were missing out on =)
Around this time we were starting to feel a bit hungry, so we made our way down into the town and found a few places along the harbourside. We decided to go to Murphy's pub (not to be confused with the 2 Murphy's ice cream shops, placed literally less than 2 blocks away from each other). We got some pints of Crean's lager, the local lager made by Dingle Brewing Company and named after Irish hero and Antarctic explorer Tom Crean. We both got fish & chips for lunch, which we enjoyed thoroughly.
On our walk into town we saw a local hardware shop by day/pub by night (Foxy John's) advertising a 5 PM session, so we decided to go check that out. We walked in and it was a younger girl singing quietly but beautifully, accompanied by an older gentleman on the guitar. When she wasn't singing, the girl played a wooden flute. We got a couple of pints and listened in for a while. We wandered around a bit more, and noticed that this is the place of temperature extremes. During the day the weather has been beautiful and the sun shining-it gets up into the upper 60s, which is warmer than what we've been used to thus far on the trip. However, once the sun starts to drop the temperature quickly falls into the mid 40s, which coupled with gusty wind is quite chilly. We walked back up to our room to watch the sunset over the harbour and put on some warmer jackets.
Following that we decided to look for another pub to kill some time in before we went looking for a trad session, which start around 21:30 here as well. We went to a place called Dick Mack's (referenced in a line from a Gaelic Storm song we love) for a pint and hoped for some conversation with locals. Unfortunately, Wednesday was to be the night of unfortunate locals. There were several people in there who looked to be weather-beaten and who were already quite drunk and yelling obscenities at one another (partially in jest but also maybe a little more serious than I was comfortable with). We finished those pints rather quickly and decided to just go ahead and go to the Court House Pub, where we knew there would be a session.
Upon arriving at the Court House it was completely dead. Like, us and one other person dead. We figured we would stay a while and at least have a good seat when the music started, and if it sucked or never picked up we would just leave. While we were sitting there, the one other customer started bullshitting with us and the bartender said something like "that's Charlie; he's a fisherman and he works hard and plays hard." This Charlie fellow seemed friendly enough, and we carried on a converation with him for a while, covering plenty of topics from his children and grandchildren to local art shops. He was drinking consistently throughout, and he started telling us about how when the music starts he always dances because he has a connection with his now-deceased grandmother who always took him to pubs when he was younger. Uh, ok? He also mentioned at this point how at previous sessions he had been asked to leave because he was in love with a girl who didn't love him back and he's written 4 songs about her. I didn't quite follow this logic, but whatever.
So the music starts. It's 2 guys, one playing an accordion and one with a guitar. Pretty lively. Charlie gets up to go outside, and he was gone for a hot minute. When he got back inside, a woman had taken his seat next to where Ryan was sitting. So Charlie commences dancing. Whoa. Like spastic interpretive dance moves, with a drunk flair. We're watching the show and keeping our pints refilled, so I kind of lost track of Charlie again for a while. Next thing we know he tells us he's getting kicked out and he'll be out back. I have no idea what happened-I'm not sure if he was just getting too drunk or his dance moves were annoying people or if something else happened, but either way at this point we were glad to be rid of him.
The session continued for a bit and then the musicians took a break. Ryan and I were enjoying it but wanted to see if there were any other good sessions on anywhere else. We walked outside and crossed the street, having decided to go check out the session on at An Droichead Beag (Small Bridge Bar-Dingle is a Gaeltacht region, which basically just means they try to primarily use the Irish language instead of English to help preserve it). Just as we are getting to the other side of the street Charlie comes flying up towards us, super happy to have found us and asking us if we want to play pool. Uh, no. Sorry buddy. God only knows where we would have ended up. We walk into a bar called the Mighty Session, just trying to get rid of him. He follows us in and before I can even make it over to the bar to order the barman is out from behind the bar kicking Charlie out. Victory!! We spotted 2 empty chairs at a table with a few people sitting at it, and asked if we could join them to listen to the music.
We sit down and during breaks in the music exchange pleasantries. It turns out the older couple next to me is from north of Galway (Achill Island) and the woman sitting next to Ryan is from Maine. The gentleman of the couple owns a bar, but all the rest of us were nurses. Weird coincidence. The couple leaves to meet up with a friend elsewhere in town, and now it's just us and the Maine nurse, who was wasted. She insisted on buying us a round of drinks (who would say no to that?) but then started in on a story about how she was here with girlfriends celebrating her 60th birthday (she said that part about 75 times) and that they had left her to go to some other bar. At this point I was starting to see why they left her. In an effort to not hear her drunkenly tell the same story over and over again instead of listening to the music, we decided to go back to our original plan of checking out An Droichead Beag. We walk in, get our pints, and who do we see again but Charlie, who immediately spots us. We finished the pints and decided to call it a night, since apparently nowhere was safe from weirdos that night.
Yesterday morning (Thursday, October 1) we woke up and were a little worse for the wear after the night before. We ventured down the hall for breakfast at the B&B. I got the full Irish (the best version I've had yet, by far) and Ryan got the special, which was a poached egg, smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce over a slice of brown bread. Both delicious, and both served with some much needed coffee.
After breakfast we came up with our plan for the day. We decided to start with a walk up the hill behind our B&B to the Dingle Brewing Company where we did the self-guided tour. Honestly not the best brewery tour we've been on in my opinion, but it was kind of cool to learn about the building's history as a creamery. Plus we got a pint of Crean's to enjoy while we walked around the building so...not a total waste.
Once we were done at the brewery we stopped to pick up more bottled water to keep in the room. Ryan had the unpleasant task of lugging a cumulative 12 litres of water up the long, steep hills that lead back to our hotel room. After that we headed back down to the harbourside for lunch. We tried a place called John Benny's Pub, where I got the seafood pie and Ryan had a beef and Guinness pie. The food was decent, and we were ready for our next adventure.
We had a tour at the Dingle Distillery booked for 4 PM, and at this point it was about 3. With not much else to do we decided to take a leisurely stroll out towards the distillery, which is on the opposite edge of town from where we were. Unfortunately, everything here is fairly small so we were still about 30 minutes early. We relaxed and soaked up some warmth at a picnic table out in front of the distillery while we waited for things to get going.
When 4 PM finally rolled around the tour got started. The guy leading the tour informed us that he is usually one of the distillers, but the tour guide wasn't there that day so he would be leading the tour. This turned out to be a huge bonus for us. On previous guided tours of distilleries or breweries, the guide is usually hired for that job-guiding. They don't tend to be people who have actually worked as brewers or distillers, which basically means they are following a script of what to talk about instead of actually going over the process from first hand knowledge. Our tour guide at the Dingle Distillery was very thorough and knowledgable in a way that only comes from experience. Once the tour was over it was sample time! Since the distillery is only about 2.5 years old, there was no whiskey available to taste yet. Under Irish law, whiskey must be matured for 3 full years after distillation before it may legally be called whiskey. This means that Dingle Distillery's first batch won't be available until December of this year. So what does a distillery do to make money while waiting for their whiskey to be ready? They make vodka and gin, of course!
In the sample room we each got to taste their vodka and gin, which were both delicious. I don't typically enjoy vodka very much and I love gin but wouldn't normally drink it straight. These were both amazingly smooth and easy to drink straight though. We also got to taste the "whiskey spirit" which is the product that comes out at the end of the 3rd distillation but has not yet been aged in a barrel. It is strong! It smells like tequila in the glass, but if you pour a small drop out into the palm of your hand and rub your hands together the alcohol will evaporate and leave behind a yeasty, bready smell (since the 3 ingredients in whiskey are water, barley and yeast). It was an interesting extra bit of tasting we hadn't ever gotten to take part in before.
By the time we got out of the tour it was just after 5 PM and we still had a hike we wanted to take out to the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbour, which is on the opposite side of town from the distillery. We knew we had until about 7:30 before the sun would set, so we headed out in search of the trail. We discovered that when they say a "small footpath" in the Irish countryside they really mean a rocky trail through several cow pastures (complete with grazing cows in the middle of the "trail" and lots of fresh cow poo). We squeezed ourselves through small openings in rock walls and slipped past gates, all while being comforted that at least if we were trespassing there were several other people on the trail who would go down with us.
When we made it out to the tip of the trail we found a small beach with a few dogs who were having a great time frollicking at the edge of the water. We were also able to see Hussey's Folly, a tower apparently built for no real purpose by someone with too much money back in the 1800s. As we headed back into town the sun was drifting down in the sky and everything around us was getting that lovely glow and beautiful color you tend to see in the evening light.
We made it back into town and we were starving! The first place we checked into eating was an all-seafood restaurant called Out of the Blue, known for using only seafood that was brought in fresh by the fishing vessels that morning. Unfortunately, they were packed and we were informed by the hostess that the first available table wasn't until 8:45. Uh, no. Not gonna work. We moved on to a place called Sheehy's Anchor Down, which was recommended by a local earlier in the day. We got inside and it smelled delicious. We were seated immediately, but not given any menus. Weird, but ok. The restaurant was almost completely full, and lots of parties seemed to be getting their food or wrapping things up, so we knew the staff was busy. Also, service tends not to be as immediate in some places here as it is in America, so we've learned to give them a little bit of a grace period. As the minutes passed I started to notice that the staff didn't seem to have any idea we were there. One girl stood right next to our table, kind of looked around like she was wondering what to do next, then started setting up a table across the aisle that had just been bussed. Okkk, time to leave.
We walked back down the road to the Dingle Bay Hotel's restaurant, as we noticed their menu looked decent when we walked by earlier. We decided to eat at the bar just to get things moving along a little quicker. Ryan got vegetable soup to start and I had the seafood chowder. One thing I love about Ireland is you usually get brown bread and delicious Irish butter...yum. For dinner Ryan had fish & chips and I had pasta with prawns.
After dinner we walked back up the hill to the Mighty Session to watch more music. The session there was two older guys, one playing the uilleann pipes, the other on guitar. It was fun to get to watch the pipes played up close, but it was busy in the pub and there were so many people talking it was hard to properly hear the music. We decided to finish out the night at An Droichead Beag where two younger guys were playing a session with an accordion and a guitar. They were a little better to listen to and the crowd was a lot less noisy over there. We stayed for a bit and then I was starting to get sleepy so we came back to the room and called it a relatively early night.
Whew, ok that's all for now. I'm going to let Ryan take it from here!
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