Thursday - To Cork

Thursday - To Cork,

It was easy to get out of Youghal. A van pulled up right behind us and tailgated until we got up to speed which we thought was quite rude really and our first encounter with an impatient Irish driver.

There are the most wonderful signs in Ireland.

Have you ever seen a cute bend sign. We did. At first it kind of had me thinking what the heck, but I figured it out pretty quick. Acute Bend does not mean that the bend is cute.

Killeagh was very cute with old buildings and colourful houses and shops. A very cute small town.

As we drove on out into the country the aroma of salt water and cows invaded our car.

Quite an odiferous moment, ahhh ... farmers fields in the spring.

The clouds were starting to roll in.

There were stonewalls around fields and some were covered with hedges. So many shades of green. ‘And shades - and shades - and shades- and shades- and shades!!! ‘

We passed through Castlemartyr, which was very pretty, even in the rain.

Maureen was getting more comfortable driving now as we appeared to be zipping right along. ‘At the Ready!!!’

Just as all was seeming fine, a circle, but not a bad one with divided highway after that. What a treat, and sunshine to boot. Another circle. Are we getting good at this or what?

A sign at the side of the road tells us that Cork is a nuclear free zone. That is most comforting.

Downtown Cork is very busy and our map to the hostel was not so good.

We ended up at the university asking directions from a young girl who must have thought I was walking because when we tried to follow her directions we wound up on the wrong side of the river Lee . We pulled in to a little flower shop where the owner gave us great directions to the hostel.

Getting back across the bridge was tricky as it was very busy

and the cars were coming across ‘like little fish being born swimming so fast’ that there was no time to scoot into the lane we needed. But we did and when we got to the hostel we found that they did not have any parking in the front. They gave us directions on how to get to their parking in the rear ,which, if any mistakes were made would mean another tour of the neighbourhood to get back to the one way lane to get to the laneway to the parking area.

We decided that I would go and stand in the laneway out back so that Maureen would know where to pull in. While I was waiting it poured cats and dogs. Luckily I had my trusty umbrella. We were in Room 6 and when we got up there, we always seemed to be on the second or third floor, there was someone’s things in the room. I thought well this is weird they gave us a room that was already occupied.

So I went down and told the check in folks that someone’s things are in our room and they looked at me like I was crazy and said ‘Yes, It is a shared room.’ Well, Did I feel like an idiot or what? I forgot that we were sharing in some of our accommodations. Ha ha.

We settled in and met one of our roomies, Ingrid, a very friendly and very chatty lady from the Netherlands. We decided to go for a coffee. Just down the street we were told was a coffee shop as well as the buses to go into downtown. We left the car at the hostel, grabbed our umbrellas and walked. The Coffee and Chai tea were great. We made our plans to adventure in Cork.