Cork City

On Monday, we drove into Cork City, which took less than an hour. Cork has a population of about 180,000 (second only to Dublin in size) and the business/shopping district is very walkable, so we parked and hoofed it everywhere. Patrick Street is the center of the shopping district and has many pleasant stores, restaurants and pubs. The English Market is a large building, rather hidden away right in the middle of everything, with numerous stalls offering all kinds of fresh food. We had lunch in the market; it took them so long to get the food to us that they didn’t charge us and apologized profusely. The meal was quite good.




























We then walked to the Finn Barre Cathedral. This is a huge, stone, gothic Anglican church built in the 1860’s, but there have been churches of one sort or another on the site since St. Finn Barre lived there in 606 AD.

People in Dublin complain that they can’t understand those who live in Cork. We discussed this with a tour guide in the cathedral and he told us that Cork residents tend to talk very fast and in a higher tone of voice; when he leads tours he has to intentionally slow down. We’ve overheard a number of conversations in the street and it’s very difficult to understand; it’s taking us a while to get tuned into this.