Cork

20th - 22nd August 2009

Currently sitting on a bus waiting for it to take us on the 3+hour journey to Kilkenny. The weather is incredibly ordinary, again, but we did manage to almost have a rain free day yesterday. As we leave Cork, there are cyclists on their way here from Killarney on the Tour of Ireland. We miss seeing them by only an hour or so. Lance Armstrong is racing with them and apparently doing quite well.

Throughout this blog is going to be a big negative rant. Up until now we've had a really good run with our accommodation, and it appeared to continue when we arrived at our hostel in Cork. It was a nice big, well run place with a fantastic kitchen, lounge area, even a sauna and cinema room. We'd booked into our 4 bed dorm, but couldn't check into our room until 3. Once we got back to the hostel, just after 3, we collected our bags and headed up to check out the room. Nice, simple room, with an amazing view over the city. Shortly after we'd put our bags down, an old man turned up also to drop off his bag (it was like a big picnic cooler bag). He was probably in his late 60's, early 70's, so rather a strange type of person you see in these 'youth' hostels, but nonetheless we continued to organize ourselves in the room. After having a quick chat with this man, we found out that he was born in Cork, but left shortly afterward and migrated to New Zealand (Which we'd already picked judging by his accent). We'd told him of our plans for while we were in Cork and the afternoon was going to be spent checking out the Old English Market in the centre of town. He pretty much kicked us out of the room and told us to go do something else because he wanted to go to sleep. He also told me to go downstairs and ask at reception when he would be getting his extra blanket he'd asked for half an hour ago. I wonder what his last slave died of? We didn't leave immediately as there were things that we still needed to get sorted out in the room, but the old man stripped down to his saggy jocks and singlet and immediately started snoring.

We head out to the main street of town, St Patricks Street, and had a bit of a poke through the shops. We found the Old English Market, which has been trading on the same site for over 400 years. It was pretty cool, with lots of fresh meat, seafood and veggies and what not. We scouted out stuff to buy for dinner, but decided to buy it later on in the day so we didn't have to carry it around with us. We ended up just walking through the city streets for the rest of the afternoon/evening, picking up dinner supplies and heading back to the hostel. I cooked up a massive feast of marinated chicken niblet things and Dan made up a bit of a stir-fry. It was a lot of chicken, but I enjoyed every last mouthful. We didn't even bother heading back up to our room, but instead we went in search of a pub for a couple of early night drinks. We found a bar that's associated with the hostel and for 15% off our drinks. It was nice, we sat and watched the Ashes highlights before calling it a night at about quarter to 10. After the walk back up the hill to the hostel we went straight up to the room, grabbed pj's and toothbrushes and went down to the bathrooms to get changed and do all that jazz. We went back into the room and I read for a while with my little book lamp and Dan played on the Nintendo. We were both sound asleep before 10:30.

Early the next morning, around 5-5:30am I was woken by the old man just pacing the small room. It was only the three of us in there, and the room was only a bit longer than the length of the bunk, but he was just pacing up and back. I don't know what else he was doing, but he was in and out of the room every 10 minutes, slamming the door each time. He lifted the blinds every 3rd or 4th pace of the room. I think he was just waiting for the sun to come up. The sticky bare feet on the lino floor less than 2 feet from my head didn't allow me to get back to sleep. I think he finally left the room at about 6:30, but I wasn't really able to get back to sleep after that.

We stuffed around a bit that morning, I was in a bit of a grump, and wandered down to the city centre, surrounded by beautiful blue skies with not a cloud in sight. We found a little café for breakfast, which was surprisingly cheap and tasty. We made our way out of the shopping centre and headed for the bus stop, to catch a ride out to Blarney, to go visit the famous stone and castle. By the time we got to the bus stop, the familiar grey skies had descended over us and again the heavens opened and we got wet. We got a little bit cocky when we saw the cloudless sky and decided to leave our umbrellas at the hostel. Oh well, lesson learnt. The bus arrived and we all packed on, and we were able to witness a stupid American girl saving 4 seats for her friends who were at the back of the long line to get on the bus. An elderly man tried to sit in one of the seats as the bus was filling up quickly, and this young American girl yelled at him to get out and that 'these seats are saved'. It was rather harsh, the old fella just wanted to sit down. A kind lady offered to move over and let him sit next to her, which was nice.

We arrived out at Blarney and the weather had fined up again. It was just a short stroll from the bus stop to the castle where we lined up to get in. I whipped out the LaTrobe Card again to claim my student discount, but the girl at the ticket booth wanted to take it from me therefore revealing the valid dates hidden under my thumb. Student discount denied for the first time. The grounds and gardens of this place were amazing. It was about a 5-minute walk through the gardens to reach the castle. The grass was so green, not surprising after all the rain they have here. We thought we'd get the castle out of the way and then spend the rest of our time walking around the grounds. We made our way through the rather impressive castle, until we'd reached the top. There was a small line of people waiting to 'Kiss the Blarney Stone'. Basically the story goes, that if you kiss this particular stone that you will be given the gift of eloquence, or have the gift of the gab. Clearly I didn't even really need to kiss this stone, but I was giving Dan a good shove in its direction!!! Many famous celebrities and politicians have been known to make the journey just to kiss the rock. On appearance it looks no different to any other stone in the castle. It's set on the outside wall, just down from the top, through a little hole in the side. Hard to explain, but the photos show it better. You have to sit on the edge of the top, facing backwards, and then lower yourself backwards to grab hold of the bars then lower yourself down backwards to kiss the stupid rock; All hanging over the edge of the castle, pretty scary, but there's a flimsy little safety rail there and some weedy little guy that would never have been able to catch me if needed. We made our way down through the castle, past all the annoying American tourists. We decided to take one of the longer strolls through the grounds. We decided on the lake walk, which was expected to take about 45 minutes. Because of all the rain all the paths were all muddy, slushy and slippery, and it made walking fairly slow and difficult. We stopped at a few places along the way; my favourites were a fern garden, which was completely out of place considering the bush land that surrounded it, and the horse's graveyard. It was kind of weird seeing little tombstones for "Tiny" and co. The long walk around also took us to a little lake, and gave us a nice view of Blarney house, which wasn't open, but a very nice stately type house. We made it back to the main area of the castle grounds and decided that it would be a nice time to go get a drink and have our lunch. We'd pre bought some rolls and ham and cheese to make up. We sat on the benches and enjoyed swatting away the thousands of wasps that wanted to join us. After lunch we wandered back up to the rock close. It was just a beautiful garden area made up of lots of different rocks and waterfalls. There are stories of the Blarney witch, and you can see her kitchen which is built into the rocks and there's the witch stone among many other things. It was nice just to walk around through them. We then left the castle grounds and had a quick look through the 3 or 4 shops that make up the town of Blarney. We had a look in the Blarney Woolen Mills, they had lots of jewellery but I still couldn't find the necklace that I wanted. By the time we were back outside it was time to jump back onto the bus into Cork. The trip didn't take very long until we hit the city centre. It took about 30 minutes to go up two blocks and cross the bridge; traffic jam in Cork. By the time we got off the bus we were pretty stuffed so we decided to grab dinner supplies and head back up to the hostel. Whilst we were up in our room we met the forth person to take the final bed in our dorm. She walked in and before even offering a 'hello' she asked in her Canadian accent "Isn't this a girls dorm?". Well obviously not if Dan's lying on the bed. She then proceeded to whinge about not being in a girls dorm, and that all the bathrooms on this floor were unisex. She went on for at least 10 minutes just whinging. We had to get out. We spent a few hours checking emails and cricket scores and the like, before going up to the fantastic kitchen and making our dinner. After dinner, around 8pm, we thought we'd catch up on a film on the laptop in the room. As we entered the room we found the old man scrawling us a note, which read "Don't wake me up tonight". He then went on to whinge that we'd woken him up when we opened the door last night and got into bed. I did well to bite my tongue, but did manage a "Well that's what you expect in a shared room" and a "Well how's about you at 5am". He then accused us of talking and singing and keeping him up all night - I let him go and realized that he had probably heard people outside because he'd left the window open. Dan and I sat quietly with our earplugs and enjoyed a movie while he snored his head off, then went to bed. Canadian whinger comes in much later in the night, probably around 2 or 3 and crashes in and out of the room half a dozen times before finally opening and closing every one of her 8 bags a dozen times, then going to sleep. Finally I thought I might be able to string together a few hours of consecutive sleep, until at 5am old man starts the pacing routine again. Arghhhhhhh. It got the better of me when he had the blinds right up with the rising sun blaring right into my eyes. I politely grumbled at him to close the blinds, people are trying to sleep. So he did. And then turned on the lights. He left around 7, and then Canadian Princess gets up and quietly goes to shower I suppose. I drift peacefully back to sleep until she returns and starts slapping bottles all around the place. It was when she starts using her hairdryer that I really cracked the s***s. At 7:30, surely common courtesy would suggest that if people are trying to sleep, using a hairdryer is not the best option. After 20 minutes drying and straightening her hair, she played with all of her 8 bags again, then finally shifted out. Hurrah. I might get another hour or 2 of sleep. But no. Dan headed out to the toilet and this is when the old man comes back. I'm laying in my bed with the doona up around my face, eyes shut, and I hear "It's a nice day out", I grumble back some sort of response and then he proceeds with "So where are you from?" I again, grumble back "Australia". Surely he can see that I am trying to sleep, but he still persists with the conversation. I come to the conclusion that I am not going to get any more sleep, so I am out of bed at 8am, and in a GREAT mood. I'm sure many can attest to how good of a morning person I am, especially when I have been woken up earlier than I wanted. I headed off to have a shower and get dressed and Dan went after me. While Dan was in the shower old man returned and the first thing he asked me was "So where you're from, was that a part of Russia or something?" Not sure that I'd heard him correct I look at him strangely and say, "I beg your pardon", to which he repeats the question. I respond simply with "Australia?" Surely as a Kiwi, he could've picked up on the fact that Dan and I were Australian just by listening to us speak. What a dick. Did I mention that he wears this ridiculous wooly orange and brown coat? He hung it up over my towel and now my towel smells like it. It stunk out the whole room.

Anyway, we thought we'd take advantage of the seemingly nice weather and go and check out a few things around town. We thought we might go and have a look at a cathedral and something called "Elizabethan Fort". We didn't know what it was but it was on our map so we set out to find it. Turns out it was just some brick walls, which now housed a Police, or Garda, station. Turned out to be very uneventful. We walked just down the road a little bit to find a moderately sized cathedral. We went to walk in but saw the 3Euro admission fee and decided to give it a miss. I really wanted to go see the Cork City Gaol, but I also knew it was going to be a bit of a walk to go and see it. Already a bit weary, we reluctantly set off up the big hill to find the gaol. 40ish minutes and a massive hill later we were at the gaol. We paid the entrance fees and collected our audio guides. Now most places these days have very fancy audio guides, some using infrared and Bluetooth and other devices. Not the Cork City Gaol. They elect to stay a little retro and dish out Sony Walkmans and Cassettes to their customers. We made our way around the prison listening to the little stories on the tapes. It terms of the other gaol that we visited the buildings of the Cork Gaol were much more modern, and yet, more impressive. Even though the gaol was shut down in the 1920s, it looked very well looked after, more so than the Kilmainham Gaol. We really got to only look in one of the wings, which was disappointing, because the place was massive. At the end we were lead into another room where we got to watch quite possibly the worst audiovisual presentation ever. They should be embarrassed. We left the gaol and set back towards town again. At least this time it was all down hill. We walked through another section of the city in the search for some lunch, and then made our way back to the awesome market for dinner supplies. We also had to pick up Dan's jeans from a sewing place, where they'd managed to replace the crutch for him. 10Euros on that was cheaper then sending them home for Cheryl to fix for him!!! He just couldn't bring himself to terms of throwing them out just yet.

It was late afternoon by the time we got back to the hostel. We thought that we'd take advantage of the cinema room being vacant and watch a film. For some stupid reason I chose 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. We settled into the massive beanbags and watched the drugged up works of Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. Bizarre movie. Afterwards we cooked tea, and then headed back down to the little pub we enjoyed so much a couple of nights before. By the time we left it was pissing down with rain, therefore spoiling the chance of us having a rain free day. When we got back to the hostel I contemplated pacing around the room and playing with my bags for a while before going to sleep, just to piss the old man off, but I was nice hoping that he would be a little bit more considerate the following morning.

5am same routine, pacing around, lights on, curtains up, playing with bags, the whole lot. I grumbled and huffed for a bit, but it made no difference. The new guy in the bedroom also had a little whinge at him, but still had no effect. We left a little earlier though this morning so I managed to get a couple of hours sleep before getting up at 9, showering, packing bags and leaving the hostel. When we went down to the reception to check out, old man was at the desk pestering the nice staff about this, that and the other. The guy behind the desk politely told him that he'd have to wait as they had about 20 people trying to check out. Old man continued to interrupt the guy behind the desk. I'm glad it wasn't just us he pissed off.

So that brings us here to Kilkenny. I didn't end up writing this on the bus as about 5 minutes into the journey I felt myself getting a little queasy. So after 3 and a half hours on buses we made it to Kilkenny: A smallish town, with a large castle and a well-known cream beer that we will have to try in the next couple of days. Dan is currently snoring his head off on the bunk on top of me, I suppose I should wake him up soon to go and find some dinner! Here's hoping to a good nights sleep tonight!