Doughcloyne Cork

During a chance telephone conversation with my life long friend Donal McClement, he told me that the recession in Ireland was not doing much for his sales as a yacht broker and that he was going away next year for up to six months with Cork architect Stephen Hyde on his beautiful Oyster 56 yacht 'A Lady' to participate in part of the World ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers).

I knew Stephen quite well ...

... action and by this point we realized that we were very tired and it seemed better to rest at this point. A few of us spent the night researching for the trip ahead. We used the Let's Go Europe 2009 book and I would highly recommend this to anyone who is even thinking about traveling. It is so helpful and points you to all of the things you would want to see and how to get to all of the spots in the most budget and time efficient manner.

... the graveyard and sketched it while the sun went down. creepy? alex thought so, i wasn't as creeped out. for dinner that night we went to the grocery store and took advantage of the kitchen kinlay house had and made some sweet dinner...noodles and tofuuu. a nice relaxing day and getting some sketch on after a pretty unproductive dublin.

... the colors were. The bus ride was about an hour but it could have gone all day for all I cared. The small town of Dingle is based at the bottom of the mountains and is surrounded by beautiful blue waters and bright colored houses. The first day I just walked and walked soaking up everything I could. I also learned how stupid I was for not breaking in my hiking boots. The next morning I woke up early and went and took pictures of the quiet town at sunrise. Absolutely amazing. I took ...

... drizzle that lasted for our time ashore. But we were prepared for the damp weather. Both of us wore rain jackets and had umbrellas. The weather was cool but not uncomfortable. It made for a nice day for our walk thru the County of Cork. We had decided to go into the City of Cork, Ireland for the start of our Irish Adventure and later we would return to Cobh to finish our walk thru Ireland. The ship was berthed and we were thru immigration by 08:00AM. It was just a few ...

... or if she's sitting here eatin gmy food! And it's not like I can say anything to her, because I haven't caught her in the act.... We also ate at this really really amazing Italian place called Scuzzi's. It was expensive, but really worth it. I got salsa wings (mmm) made with their homestyle salsa. I will have to try the noodles eventually though. speaking of noodles, we found a REAL ramen restaurant. I'm going to have real ramen in Ireland before I ...

... of the only museum of significance in Cork. The walk took us along the river and it as really beautiful. We ended up in the university area which is significantly more appealing then then rest of Cork (which is kind of boring and a little dodgy-seeming). We got to the museum only to find it's closed until Wednesday for an installation. ALL of the galleries in it were closed. So we walked back to the downtown to get some butter-fudge (we got orange chocolate swirl and caramel ...

Champions League Final with the Parfreys (Man U. over Chelsea on penalties)
-Seamus not watching the match because he was too nervous (bet on Chelsea to hedge bets [United supporter])
-obviously match preceded by Ladbrokes, where we get screwed again
Au Brog afterewards
-Kev ...

... in time, thanks to my lateness) and we ready for our weekend in Cork! Well, after an extremely long 4+ hour bus ride later (filled with lots of St. Bernard Chocolate Chip Cookies (my fav.), and talk of owning Sheep Farms)....we finally were in Cork, a little tired and a lot hungry. Since I had booked the hostel, it was my job to find the hostel when we arrived in Cork. Now, I had done my homework and printed the directions, knew the ...

... seems so inappropriate to describe an ocean view in kilometres.]To the southwest rolling hills, cliffs and a patchwork of fields. Northeast was just an expanse of blue water. Very few boats. No doubt it was not as good a scene as might be seen south west of Killarney but it was good enough for me. I pretended it was as far west as one could go but if I looked more closely at my map I could see that it was not as far anything really...just as far as I wanted to ...