- Cork
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Ireland
An unassuming hostel, up the side of a hill, near Dunmanway in Co. Cork
Quiet and peaceful, you can camp, stay in an old gypsy caravan, sleep in the dorm, or take the family room with private bathroom.
One of the best things about Cork (and there are many!) is that you have a choice of two stouts that aren't Guinness.
Murphy's is brewed at the Lady's Well Brewery in Blackpool and Beamish and Crawford is brewed on the South Main Street, just across the road from An Spailpin Fanach, one of Cork's better pubs and a great place for folk music.
Both brews are delicious - but don't take my word for it, I'm a native! Do try them if you're in the city.
Much is made in Ireland these days about the decline of the traditional pub, and that is indeed a sad event. But on the other hand, it’s hard to halt change, and when it takes the charming form of this tapas/wine bar, why would you want to?
The atmosphere is warm and friendly all through the week, the food is small and tasty, and the wine list is copious. The prices are a little higher than the pub round the corner, but it’s a case of chalk and Camembert.
Address: 6 Bridge Street, Cork.
Telephone: (353-21) 4559049
Website: www.boqueriasixbridgest.com
Email: tapas@boqueriasixbridgest.com
One of the best restaurants I've ever eaten in, vegetarian or otherwise. They now also have a few bedrooms upstairs
Walk west about three minutes along Washington St. from the city centre, and it's on your right.
Tel. +353 21 4277939
Upmarket lounge club in the city centre. Intimate and luxurious, Liquid Lounge is like something you'd find in San Francisco. Lovely VIP area and fantastic smoking garden.
29 Marlboro St
www.liquidlounge.ie
T: +353214376097
Means “that’s it” in Irish, and, like the name suggests, it’s a no-frills pub that lets the atmosphere do the talking. Usually packed with a good mix of ages and nationalities, with music and comedy gigs, it’s a buzzing place. And that’s it.
Address: Coburg Street, Cork.
Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows their own name … Crazy pub down by the docks that attracts a bizarre and eclectic mix of Cork society in to dance, sing, perhaps play the air guitar on the bar to a cheering horde, generally forget their troubles and go wild. Alcoholic drink may be involved.
Location: Corner of Albert Quay and Victoria Road.
Telephone: (353-21)4965704.
Scuzzy, scummy student pub with too-loud music and no manners. Great.
Address: 74 Oliver Plunkett Street, Cork.
Telephone: (353-21) 4271392.
A superb little art house cinema that offers up a great selection and diversity of films, particularly given that it has only two screens. Timetable only available on the website or by phone.
Location: Washington Street, Cork.
Telephone: (353-21) 4271571.
Website: www.kinocinema.net
Email: kinocinema@indigo.ie
A Cork institution, barely touched by the years and all the better for it. The renowned speciality is the doorstep sandwich served up at lunchtime, but my personal favourite is the “self-cleaning” gents toilet that is open to the elements. They don’t make them like this any more.
Address: Winthrop Street, Cork.
Telephone: (353-21) 4272144.
Like entering your grandmother’s front room, if your grandmother was a crotchety, curmudgeonly old man who was inclined to throw people out for using mobile phones (fair enough) or giving “looks” (a bit harsher), but who on the plus side serves up a great pint of stout and stubbornly refuses to enter “modern” Ireland. An island in a sea of change, the Hi-B is a haven (provided your phone is off).
Location: Corner of Oliver Plunkett Street and Winthrop Street, upstairs.
Telephone: (353-21) 4272758.
This wonderful restaurant and hotel is a big old house where they source the food locally with fish from Ballycotton, superb beef from Cloyne, vegetables from their own gardens and cheese from local indepedent cheesemakers. If you have the time do visit Ballymaloe Cookery School. Their cookbook is well worth buying.
Ballymaloe House and Ballymaloe Cookery School, Shanagarry, Midleton, Co Cork.
Tel: +353 (0) 21 464 6785.
www.ballymaloe.ie
Ballymaloe is about 20 miles east of Cork.
Take a walk about 10 minutes from the city centre to Fitzgeralds Park, a lovely park on the banks of the Lee. Here also you will find the Cork Museum with a riverside cafe in its recent extension. There are lovely views of the gardens of grand houses in the Sundays Well district, sweeping down to the banks of the river. And there’s a well-stocked playground for the kids.
Cork Public Museum, Fitzgeralds Park;
Tel: 021 4270679;
www.corkcity.ie/ourservices/rac/museum
The city is walkable, despite the hills! The best view, after Shandon, is from Audley Place at the top of Patrick's Hill. The hill is pretty steep, but you'll be rewarded by the view north and west, as far as the County Hall and beyond. Really lovely.
If you believe in it, you can kiss the Blarney Stone on the top of Blarney Castle, about ten kilometres from the city. The legend derives from Cormac Teige McCarthy who, when he promised loyalty to Queen Elizabeth l, but would not give in to her, got the response from the Queen that he was giving her, “a lot of Blarney.”
If after climbing the Medieval stone staircases, hanging upside down over the edge of the castle you still feel like kissing the stone, well and good. Me, I can’t help thinking about everyone else who has kissed it!
Venture to the west of the county where thunderous surf pounds the beaches around Clonakilty. We stayed in a cottage up a boreen beside a zinc mine with the rustic name of, “Our Lady’s Well Mine.” A pastoral idyll with echoes of Arcady, except for the blast of gelignite every day at noon.
It can be so hot here on the beach that the sand will burn your feet as you walk out to the water. And when you get into the water be careful of the jellyfish the size of dinner plates, to say nothing of the sea urchins…
Not far from Cork is Cobh, or Queenstown which is actually the port for Cork and it was here that the Titanic made the final landfall before setting off on the fateful journey as had many an emigrant to the Americas before.
Amongst the usual produce are products peculiar to Cork. Drisheen, a mixture of dried sheep’s blood and herbs in a long pudding skin. Or Crubeen, pigs’ feet boiled “with the hoof on!” And Trotters - sheep’s feet boiled in water.
Princes Street
Tel: 353 21 427 3251
If your preference is for browsing through little shops hoping for the non-existent bargain, visit the Paul Street area, a former back street now converted into a thriving shopping area of restaurants, boutiques, craft shops and bookshops in the heart of old Cork. It has to be said that it is different from the usual trendy street that most cities have nowadays.
There is a French feel about this part of the city which isn’t surprising as this was part of the Old French Quarter in the seventeenth century when Huguenots fleeing from persecution in their own country, settled here and started trading.
If you’re a fan of Jazz, this city is for you. The annual Guinness Jazz Festival takes place during the last weekend in October. This is when the city pulses and throbs with the rhythms of Count Basie, Fats Waller and Dizzy Gillespie all day and all night.
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