So after another (ANOTHER!) week of night duty at the hospital, I found myself with a few days off. With the extra time on our hands, we decided to hop a train and explore the city of Cork for a few days. Though the change of scenery was nice, the trip wasn’t quite all it could have been.
For starters, the weather was crap. Wind and rain, more wind and rain. Yes, I know what country we are living in, and that when in Ireland one has to expect a certain amount of such weather. What gets me is that it has been like this since Saturday, which was coincidentally the first day I had off in a week. The previous week, when I was working nights and trying to sleep through the day, the weather was perfect, low 60’s, and sunny. Not a drop of rain. Ugh!
The second factor that took away form the trip a bit was the fact that Cork is apparently closed during the first week of May. OK, so the city isn’t closed, but it might as well have been. Here’s a brief run-down of what we tried to do, sometimes successfully, sometimes not:
Beamish Brewery: No tours given yesterday because they were taking VIPs through the place. No tours given again until Thursday.
Crawford Municipal Art Gallery: Actually open, but a large portion of the museum was closed until Friday while they install a huge new exhibit. We did get to see the works of several Irish artists.
Cork Vision Centre: No, not an optometrist’s office, this building houses a presentation on the history of Cork. As interesting as this may (or may not) have been, it was closed this week while they refurbished the exhibit.
Triskel Arts Centre: A gallery of contemporary art that, like our previous attempt at culture, was only partially open. Though most of the rooms were closed for new installations, we did get to see a small display of paintings from artists from Belarus and the Ukraine, who were affected by the Chernobyl accident 20 years ago.
Cork Butter Museum: Yes, you read correctly. The museum, though small, was actually fairly interesting, detailing how the region’s dairy farmers became major players in the butter markets of the world. Now there’s a statement I’ve never uttered before!
Cork City Gaol: A well-preserved 19th century prison that not only housed some of Ireland’s more famous political revolutionaries, but also common folk happy to be found guilty for petty crimes, as it meant they would have a few weeks worth of food and shelter.
Today we came back into Dublin, and now it’s business as usual. Thankfully, the train station in Cork was open for business today.
As I type: listening to Fugazi “Steady Diet of Nothing”
Comments
I know how you feel about things being closed. When I was travelling around Europe in 1999 almost everything was covered in scaffolding due to renovations and cleaning so everything was pretty for the year 2000 celebrations. But mostly you could still get inside and see things.
Oh, and nice post title ;)
Posted by: Jeff Smith | May 4, 2006 04:58 PM