Voyage of the Vikings Redux – Cobh, Ireland

Cruise Day 20

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Today we are docked in Cobh (pronounced Cove) and this is the first time we have visited this area.  Cobh is a small town on an island in Cork's Harbor.  Cork is much larger than Cobh and has a population of 222,000.  Cobh is known for being the last port the Titanic visited before its ill fated journey across the Atlantic.  You can visit The Titanic Experience Cobh in the old White Star Line ticket office while you are there, and many of the people on our ship did that during our visit.

Another popular place to visit in the area is Blarney Castle that has the well known Blarney Stone.  It is only about a thirty minute drive from Cobh to Blarney Castle and a lot of people took tours to "kiss the Blarney Stone".  Although the castle and gardens looked beautiful, kissing the Blarney Stone didn't appeal to us.  I had watched a video where people were waiting in line several hours to do that and besides the long wait, do you really want to put your lips on something thousands of other people do every day?

A more detailed map of the area around Cobh (marker in the upper right).  Our tour today took us southwest of Cobh to the town of Kinsale (marker in the lower left).

We arrive in Cobh under dark and dreary skies.

We are on a ship excursion today called “Cork's Countryside & Kinsale” which will take us on a drive through the countryside to the seaside town of Kinsale”.  The excursion didn’t leave until noon, but we were up at 8:00 AM as we wanted to take advantage of one of the perks we get by booking a suite and eat breakfast in the Pinnacle Grill, which is an upscale restaurant that normally costs extra to go to.  It is only open for breakfast for suite guests and there is no extra charge.  Despite the fact that this is supposed to have better food, our breakfast was a little disappointing mainly due to the scrambled eggs that Val and I had chosen being under cooked, runny and not very good.  The rest of the meal was fine, and the service, as always, was excellent.

We spent the rest of the morning relaxing and getting our things together and then around 11:45, headed to the World Stage to wait for our tour to be called.  Things seemed to be a bit delayed as we didn’t get called to our tour until almost 12:30.

Unfortunately, when we got up this morning, we saw that the weather was very overcast and dark with rain predicted today.  There was also some fog that reduced visibility, but what can you do, as the weather is just what it is.  When we left the ship, it had started to rain, but the buses were nearby so we didn’t get very wet, and we did have our rain gear with us.

The drive from the dock to Kinsale took us through some beautiful countryside. We followed the coast for a while and then turned inland where the land is very lush and green with a lot of agriculture.  Although the weather remained very cloudy, it did stop raining and the temperature was very mild, so we weren’t cold.

Kinsale is a historic town located on a small harbor and we made one stop at Fort Charles that was on a hilltop that gave us a view of the town and harbor below.  We weren’t able to go into the fort as we didn’t have enough time, but the view was great.  We drove on into Kinsale and had two hours to explore on our own. 

Fort Charles

Kinsale across the bay.

Kinsale is a small picturesque town of around 5,000, and we enjoyed walking along the harbor and then through town exploring the streets and the shops.  Val visited quite a few of the shops and found some things to buy for herself, but mostly for Christmas gifts, Val is always thinking ahead when it comes to gift giving.

When we saw this mural painted on the stairs we didn't know what it was about, but further investigation when we got back to the ship revealed that Anne Bonny (the Anne is hidden behind the railing) was an Irish pirate in Caribbean who was born in Kinsale.  She became famous as she was one of the few female pirates.  She was captured and sentenced to be hung, but pleaded to be spared as she was pregnant at the time.  Her hanging was postponed, and her fate is unknown, but her death is recorded a short time later and it is speculated she was either hanged or died in childbirth.  It is an interesting story and you can find out more here.

This was an interesting shop where the jeweler made all his own jewelry.

This is the jeweler's worktable.  Val bought two pairs of earrings, one for herself and one as a gift for her friend Marsha who is taking care of our house.  It was an interesting shop, here is a link to Kinsale Silver.

We were getting a little tired of walking and decided to rest our feet a bit and stopped at one of the local pubs where I sampled a Murphy’s, a local beer from the Cork area.  I am not a big beer drinker, but I did try a Guiness when we were in Dublin so I thought I should try something that Cork had to offer.  The bartender at the pub told me that some Americans had come in and ordered Coors (which they surprisingly had on tap), but he couldn’t figure out why they had come all this way only to drink what they could get at home.

After finishing my beer, we felt rested and wandered around a bit more and then headed back to where the bus was going to pick us up.  We made it with about ten minutes to spare and luckily the bus showed up right away as it started to rain again, but this time a little harder.

We were on the bus before we got too wet and started the drive back.  We took a slightly different route through some very scenic countryside, but we had a limited view as everything was shrouded in clouds and mist.  Except for the few main roads, the roads in this area are very narrow which made for a real challenge for the driver of our big bus.  He’d obviously done this before as he handled it without problem, but I was impressed especially in Kinsale that was very busy with very narrow roads.

We got to the ship past the all aboard time, but because we were on a ship excursion, they waited for us.  The rain had stopped by the time we arrived at the ship, so we made it on board without getting wet.

The sail out of the harbor was supposed to be very beautiful, but unfortunately, the fog had returned and there was nothing to see.  We spent the rest of the evening relaxing until it was time for dinner, but I did update the blog as we have two more port days coming up in a row, so I wanted to make sure to write things up when they were fresh in my memory.

We had another good dinner tonight and then, as usual, we went to the casino.  After a couple days of losing in the casino, Val had another big win, not nearly as big as her win a couple of days ago, but big enough to be one our best wins on a cruise ship.  Since Val gifted me some of her winnings, I have also been winning so maybe some of her luck rubbed off on me via her money.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Belfast in Northern Ireland.