Downtown Cork

We pulled Card #27 - Cork City.

We caught the # 8 or #14 to downtown and hit the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, which was very nice. I could have spent a whole day in there very easily. between the sculptures and all the different shows it was really a great art gallery. The painting 'Time Flies 'by William Gerard Barry was one of our favorites. I did try to take pictures without flash but most were fuzzy and almost

unrecognizable to the originals. When I use zoom on my camera I really should get a tripod as any movement causes the pictures to blur. But at least I get the idea of what they looked like.

We had a most scrumptious lunch at the Café Bar Deli (it couldn’t make up its mind what it wanted to be). It had a

lovely tin ceiling. Maureen had the butternut and cider soup and I had the feta and roasted hazelnut mixed salad with roasted red pepper pesto. Yummy!

The girl behind the till recognized a fellow Canadian when we went to pay because I said Tooney. It is really all a secret code. She was from Nova Scotia and had been in Ireland for the past two years at school.

Lots of rain and sun mixed up with lots of shops and people and a very large very old church but we could not figure out the name of it.

We also went into the famous English Market, a very large indoor market and bought pears and cashews.

The exit we took brought us right across the street from a great little park in the middle of Cork. It had little copses of birch trees which Maureen wanted pictures of. There were fountains and the

statue of the Onion Seller which I liked very much. As it was close to lunch time there were a few people in the park which I found interesting as it had just rained like crazy and so was definitely damp.

A real little gem of a park. A quiet space in the middle of the busy city. At the far end was a swan fountain. Or maybe canada geese but we are going to go with swans and they

seem to be all over Ireland. Very cool .

Our mission was to find the Beamish Brewery and go on the tour. It was supposed to be on the other side of the park so we were eager to get there, as it had been a thirsty morning. When we exited the park we found that we had arrived at the proper location. We went up to the little security house at the entrance and asked the guard when the tours were and he informed us that the Brewery had been shut down due to the recession. The brewery had moved half the staff to another brewery in town but had to lay off the other half. We were very sad.

So we decided to go to St Finbarr'se Cathedral instead. Across the Bridge and up the hill to one of the most fabulous churches I have ever seen.