| Dublin | Holyhead | Iona | Portree | Orkney |
Cobh/Cork, Ireland June 6, 2005
| The harbor that serves the city of Cork is actually a separate city (village?) called Cobh. In Irish Gaelic, that's pronounce just like "cove". Looking out the bow of the ship, it looks pretty primitive (although you can see the train station on the right edge). |  |
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Looking out the stern, you can see this area is pretty well built up and is
a bustling port. This is harbor from which most of the liners destined for the US left. Thus it's the last harbor in which the Titanic stopped, and it was the harbor the Lusitania was trying to reach when it was sunk by torpedos. |
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We boarded our busses and drove about 15 minutes into Cork. Our first stop was Honan Chapel, a Roman Catholic chapel on the campus of the University of Cork. While very nice looking, please note that it was constructed in 1935. The picture on the right is of the main aisle down the center of the chapel. The allegory is you are walking down the "river of life" as you proceed to the altar. |
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Inside is just as crisp an beautiful as the outside. I particularly like the stained glass window as shown here. |
The University of Cork looks like any classic old school. This quad has a dorm (used to be, now offices I believe) on the left, the student Union in the center and "servants" (hired help) quarters on the right. It was established by Queen Elizabeth (the first, not the current) in order to bring the word of Reformation to Ireland. It's best known professor is a fellow known as Prof. Boole. This fellow developed Boolean logic - the way that ones and zeros interact - which is the basis of modern computers.
| We then got into the bus, went downtown, parked next to the river, walked 3 blocks (all uphill to the distress of our walking limited participants) and ended up at St. Anne's church in Shandon. This is a Church of Ireland (Anglican) church dating back to Elizabeth's times. |  |
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The fun part of it is that there is a bell tower (and you can play the bells
if you'd like) and if you'll put on ear protection, you can climb all the
way to the top. Here's a picture from the top of the tower. This
church you see from St Anne's tower is a Presbyterian church. From the church we proceeded to our lunch stop, a very good restaurant located in what was formerly Turkish Baths! Then we returned to Cobh for a tour of the Cobh Heritage Center on the quayside, which documented the emigration during the Potato Famine. |
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Cobh was the port that most of the Irish Emigrants used to leave
during the Potato Famine years. Most of them went to the US, but many
also went to Australia (not always voluntarily). There's a nice
exhibit here showing what things were like in the town and
on the boats. The statue is of a 16 year old girl who emigrated with her two brothers to New York-and was the very first person to go through Ellis Island. As the boat left the harbor, we took our drinks up to the rear deck, and watched the lighthouse (and full Coast Guard (US terminology) station) at the end of the harbor. This is a very large harbor, arguably 2nd or 3rd largest in the world. |
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| Dublin | Holyhead | Iona | Portree | Orkney |
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