For those of you not familiar with our American community constellation, one of Maggie's best friends is Julia. She's a smart-as-a-whip red-head who makes Maggie giggle well into the night. We've gotten to know her mom, Liz, who is also a smarty-pants red head and who has us laughing late as well. Julia's little sister is Sophie and she is in second grade and gets on well with Johnny so it's a nice matchup!
Their travels went smoothly and they landed in Dublin in the morning on Saturday and grabbed a bus to Blackrock. We were just waking up and expected the bus would take them a little over an hour but they called us early and were waiting by the SuperQuinn!
We didn't let them give in to jet lag and headed straight down to Cobh!
I guess we let them sleep in the car for a bit...
Ann Marie suggested that we go to Cobh instead of Cork to enjoy a little seaside town. She was right, it was darling and amazing.
The most striking thing about the town, St Colman's Cathedral, is, in my opinion, comparable to any cathedral in Paris. My new camera is great but as you can see in the pictures below, the raindrops got on the lens.
The cathedral was located on this steep hill and the houses looked like San Fransisco.
Supposedly (according to my beloved lore), one of the first colonists of Ireland, Neimheidh*, first landed in Cobh Harbor over 1000 years BC.**
Our hotel was darling. Here are a couple of views from our room (Liz and all of the girls were a room above ours).
Being one of the major transatlantic Irish ports, Cobh was the departure point for 2.5 million Irish people who emigrated to North America during the famine.
It was also known for being the final port of call for the RMS Titanic on April 22, 1912 as she set across the Atlantic on her "ill-fated maiden voyage."
Local lore has it that a Titanic crew member John Coffey, a native of Queenstown, jumped ship although there is no record of him on the crew list. 123 passengers boarded in all at Cobh and only 44 survived. Hey may have just hopped on and off the ship to get a free pass to his hometown.
We went on this awesome "titanic experience" where they started by assigning us all a name of one of the 123 passengers who boarded at Cobh. You find out at the end of the interactive tour whether your person survived or not.
It turns out that only the adults in our group survived.
Johnny and Sophie spent much of the time in the car afterwards debating which are the more horrible ways to die. Drowning came in number 1. I agree fully.
More on our trip down south tomorrow!
*AKA "Nemed" meaning "holy" or "privileged." He was supposedly the leader of the third group of colohists of Ireland, the Nemedians. Supposedly he and all of his followers were wiped out by the plague.
**Of course the dates don't jibe. Wikipedia sometimes uses the term "inhabitant" and other times uses the term "colonist". They certainly can't mean "inhabitant" and if they mean colonist, I am not sure from where. The first known settlements of Ireland around 8000 BC (see below map).
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