I woke up to Ingrid using the washroom and then there was this sound. At first I thought it was a bird but it turned out to be an alarm about two blocks away. Needless to say I got up at about 420am and went looking for a mailbox to mail the 19 postcards that I had written the night before.
It was a misty kind of morning, dampish and cool but not cold. The only cars on the street were taxis and cops. I found the mailbox at the end of the street and decided to look for an all night coffee shop. We were right across the street from the University College of Cork, the UCC so I thought there must be at least one. It is a university. I did not find one.
I walked all the way around the campus perimeter and part way through it. I saw one young man walking probably home after a party and said good morning to him, which kind of surprised him. And a little later another young man going into the university. Probably to work. They lock the campus up at night so there must not be dorms on the site. I did not give up my quest. I went on down the street to the little bridge that yesterday was so busy with little cars. There were no cars and no coffee shops.
I walked up a little lane along the North branch of the river Lee to where the alarm was going off at this football field. It probably was going off for hours. At this point I thought about crime in Cork. Was there any, what kind would it be, why was I walking alone in the middle of the night in a city I did not know and where no one knew where I was? Those things past through my brain rather quickly and then I was diverted again.
Lots of birds were awake at 430 even though it was dark. They might have been woken up by the alarm but I think they are probably just early risers like myself. I had brought my umbrella with me and did open it a few times but it never really rained, it just misted heavily on me. Finally I started to see fauna. I saw a light coloured slug with spots, some starlings and a small Heron? It was too dark. I heard lots of different calls and songs but did not see them all.
I walked around a beautiful park, Fitzgerald park I found out later, with a museum or something in the center of it. One of the oldest parks in Cork. If you want to google earth it the coordinates are 51° 53' 45.03" N 8° 29' 50.10" W . The access gates were locked so a could not walk through it.
When I came up to the hostel, we were almost right across the lane from the park, I went inside to see if I could get a cup of tea. But no, the kitchen was locked, the dining room was locked, the living room was locked, so I sat in the front hall and wrote in the journal. It was 615 am when I heard someone in the dining room. I was excited. He said that in 20 minutes he would have the keys to the kitchen and then I could have my cup of tea. Yea! It was still a misty dark grey outside and there was still little or no traffic. What time do people start going to work here? At 630 I had my cup of tea. The gentleman who was setting up the dining room told me that there was an early group leaving that morning otherwise he would not have been there that early. I was so glad of that. I would not have wanted to wait another hour and a half. I thought about going for another walk but the gates to the park did not open until 830 and I was pretty sure that Maureen would be awake by then. I caught up with the journal. I tried to do it every night so that I could remember what the heck happened. So much happened every day. Our lives were full of incident and adventure.
I went upstairs at 7 to find Maureen awake. Shocking. Appears I woke up Late (700am!)
We had a lovely breakfast prepared by the kitchen and then Maureen used the phone at the hostel. Still can’t get my card to work. Ah well, courage, I got through to Dom at midnight (his time) All’s well.
We packed up which did not take long and figured out how to get to Blarney, our next adventure.
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