Cork

Last night we ate dinner at Alizar dinning room. It is similar to the Grand Pacific however a little smaller. It is your traditional dining room on a cruise. I ate eggplant parmesan and Brian had an Indian chicken dish. Both were good. We were seated with a French couple from Paris. They are retired and have been traveling all over the world. They gave us even more ideas of where to travel next. (Mom at least this should make you happy- she understands why you want grandchildren so bad she did too). We truly enjoyed talking with them and learned a lot about the French culture. We were at dinner for over 2 hours. I almost forgot, we now like English breakfast tea with milk (of course I need sugar) and we had tea with them after dessert. Their favorite places in the world have been the U.S. National parks and traveling along the Nile in Egypt.


Today we were in Cork (Cobh – pronounced Cove). I did not which city we were going to port in: Cork or Cobh. This was something that annoyed me. Cork is a major city and Cobh is a smaller port city and they are about 20 minutes apart via train. Even the freestyle daily (cruise newspaper) did not correctly tell us which city we were docking in (promising we were going to Cork). So when we were at breakfast we looked over the side and there is a sign that states “Welcome to Cobh”. Finally my question answered.


I had booked tickets for the Titanic Walking Trail in Cobh so I wanted to be in Cobh. We went on the tour at 1100 and enjoyed it greatly. We learned about some Irish history and stories about the Tiantic and Lusitania. Cobh was the last port of call for the Titanic before it sunk. We were glad we went on the tour and it lasted about 1 hour 45 minutes. We could have booked through NCL and that was $68 per person. The total cost since I booked it on my own was only 20 Euros.


The tour ended at St Colman's Cathedral. It is a very large Catholic Church with Gothic architecture. It was free to go inside and you can take photos inside too. We spent some time in there fascinated by the details and design of the church.


After that we went back onto the ship for lunch and relaxed for a little bit. Then we walked around the city of Cohn going to little shops. We learned that we should not complain about grocery prices back home. In Cobh, bananas cost 4.40 Euros per pound ($7 per pound) and grapes 13.20 Euros per pound ($21 per pound). Now that is expensive produce!


We are back on the ship and plan on going to the Grand Pacific for dinner. Hopefully we will sit with more interesting people. We were not so sure about the freestyle dinning however we have enjoyed it so far. We have eaten with British and French people and gain great insight while dinning with them. I am surprised about all the cultural insight I have developed on this trip already. (By the way, there is much more cigarette smoking in Cobn then London. We would have not thought that but that is what we noticed today).


As the ship got ready to sail away, we heard music outside. We looked out our window and saw a small band setup at the port. They were playing music led by a conductor for us. About 200 people had gathered at the port and surrounding area to listen to the music and watch the ship leave. We went to the top deck to see and here better. It was really fun. The band would play a song and then wave to everyone on the boat while we clapped. At 6pm, the boat sounded its horn. Everyone was to be aboard at 5:30. We saw two people running to the ship just minutes after the horn sounded. I bet that scared them! Listening to the band and watching all of the people wave as we left was really fun. It made us like Cobh even better.


There is a show tonight called Smokey Joe's Cafe that we hope to attend. Tomorrow we will be in Dublin and looking forward to that port of call. We are there till 8:30pm therefore I am thinking no blog post tomorrow since I will probably want to eat dinner and then get sleep. Wait and see what happens though.