Ireland: Day 4 – Cobh, Blarney, Cork, Union Hall, Glandore

We covered a lot of ground today, starting out in the port town of Cobh (pronounced ‘cove’). Cobh is literally in the cove of the city of Cork, and was the primary point of embarkment for millions of Irish emigrants. Cobh as also a major stop for transatlantic ocean liners. It was the last stop of the Titanic before it’s fateful voyage, and the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat nearby in 1915, precipitating the entry of the United States into the First World War. We visited the Cobh Heritage Center which did a good job providing background on the causes and conditions behind the Irish Diaspora. Outside of the Heritage Center is a monument to Annie Moore, the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island in the United States in 1892. We then strolled the streets of Cobh, and took a look in the Cobh Cathedral before heading off for our next stop of the day, Blarney.

Blarney Castle is one of those Irish destinations that so much is made of, you’re not quite sure what to do about it. Will it be such a tourist trap that you’ll regret going, or if you skip it will you regret having passed on such a quintessentially Irish rite? But since reading Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy World

as a kid, I knew that some day I’d kiss the Blarney Stone. The grounds around Blarney Castle were beautiful, and the weather was spectacular as it was for our entire stay in Ireland. And the castle itself is amazing, climbing the steep spiral stone staircase was scarily cool. Jennifer, not lacking in eloquence, took a pass on performing the backbend required to kiss the stone, but I went for it and haven’t shut up since.

We were headed into Cork to find some lunch, but aborted that plan quickly. We had to stop and ask directions to find our way into town, and quickly turned back due to pedestrian and vehicular traffic. And so though it was already late, it was time to set out for Casey’s. I had searched for pubs named Casey’s online in advance of our trip, and found three in the general region we would be, in Union Hall, Glandore, and Baltimore. So we set out to find one ore more.

The Casey’s in Baltimore was the farthest away, and from the web site seemed the largest and least personal, so we didn’t get that far. Maybe it’s great, we’ll give them a try again some day. So we overshot Casey’s in Glandore, which wasn’t yet open, and headed to Casey’s in Union Hall, to which crossing the one-lane bridge was the final obstacle to what was becoming a very late lunch. At Casey’s Bar in Union Hall, we finally found our lunch a a few fine pints we enjoyed on their back patio with a serene and beautiful view. And we enjoyed a nice visit with Martha Casey and her daughter Katherine before setting out for our next Casey’s Bar in Glandore, where Mary Casey gave us a warm welcome in their family business which has been in business for something like 200 years and five generations of Caseys. It was a no-brainer that I would leave wearing a sharp looking sleeveless fleece from Casey’s Bar. We’d have stayed much later, but we had a long, narrow, winding drive home, made all the trickier by the darkness, and so had to say goodbye to another Casey’s bar and head back to Halfway.