Cork City Centre Adventure

So Saturday morning I woke up and there was SUNSHINE coming in through the windows. I frantically threw off the covers, ran downstairs, and got some coffee brewing so we could get our butts moving! It was a pretty day, and I wanted to get out and about!
So after a cup of joe and a quick nosh we drove the ten minutes into downtown to St. Patrick's street--the main shopping street in Cork City.
First picture here is taken from the Patrick's Street bridge looking up the street. The statue in the middle of the street is of Father Matthew, a priest who got most people here to stop drinking for a few years. No easy feat. His life story is being told through some production at the opera house this season, but I don't know if we'll make it. . .
I turned around on the bridge to take the second picture, looking north and west of the center of town. The city looks a lot like Amsterdam minus any lochs. The River Lee and it's tributaries (??) divide the city into three sections with a lot of bridges and one-way streets. (I still think it's easier to drive around downtown here than in Houston--the signs here actually get you to your freeway of choice without any divine intervention). But it is pretty and looks just about like all other quaint European towns.
We had a few shopping necessities--John needed a belt for his football pants (they were falling down at practice last week--hehe) and I needed a few things, too. In our searching, we found a craft/sewing store that had lots of fabric and, yes, yarn!! Yippee!! We can continue our knitting adventures beyond the meager supplies I bought! The neat thing is that while they had some mass-produced brands like Patons, the majority of the yarn they sell here is produced locally. And not just "somewhere in Ireland" but, like, ten miles away on Little Island right by our house! I am pretty excited! Now, don't you all go expecting Aran knit sweaters in the mail just yet--I'm still perfecting rectangles and squares. But when I'm ready to move onto something more complicated, I know where to get my supplies. . .
My next agenda item was exploring the Old English Market. I had seen it described in the guide book and had seen the sign for it down a corridor (not big enough to be called an "alley") next to Burger King. So we popped down a dingy tunnel between two buildings that opened up into the Market. IT WAS SO COOL!! It was just like being back in China but cooler and, um, sanitary. That's a good thing, because you can find any kind of meat, produce, nuts, fish, flowers, or junk you want at the market. We saw all kinds of stuff!! I was trying to take a stealth photo of the olive vendor below but he caught me and tried to duck out of the picture. I called him back and he posed with his olive scoop.

We were caught up in the rush of things, so I didn't get olives from him this time--who could decide? They all smelled SOOOO good!!! But I'll be back. John saw some great meat products, etc. that he'll send me back to get. Basically, if it is part of an animal, they sold it there. Thank goodness I hadn't found this place in my first trimester--the sight of 1/2 pig heads and tripe might not have allowed me to enjoy things as much as I did yesterday.
Our final stop at the English Market was the fish stand. John says the fish stand is his favorite smell in the world. I don't know if I agree, but I can say that it all smelled fresh. They had some of the best looking salmon there, but since we were going to be out and about, we didn't want a kilo of fish swimming around in our bags all day.

So if you are coming to visit, you can count on a trip to the English Market and St. Patrick's street. It's really a fun time. Talking with the Chicas, we all agreed quite surprisingly that being on Patrick's street for the first time kind of feels like being in a much-less-crowded New York City street. I'm not sure how to justify our comment except that we all came up with that comparison. Interesting. . .

The nice thing about being in the shopping part of town is being able to duck into a store or under an awning whenever it rains. This happened several times during our adventure yesterday. But the great thing is that you get to shop around and stay dry!

One of the sights I was unable to capture because of the weird angle of the sun was all of the tiny side-streets with neat shops, cafes, and restaurants that open off of the main streets. I'll try to get that next time--perhaps when we are closer to summer and the sun gets above the 10AM position every once in a while. We did walk by the Cafe Mexicano restaurant but I am just not desperate enough yet to pay premium prices for bad chips and salsa and store-bought tortillas. Speaking of tortillas, I have a recipe for easy, homemade ones that I still need to try this week. Along with mac and cheese (there is no Kraft in the box here) from scratch, I have some culinary adventures planned for the week.
Well, I'm headed to fold the piles of laundry that await as I attempt to try to keep things clean. My washing machine needs to be available for when John gets home from football practice so he can just put all the muddy stuff directly into the wash! He's having a great time, so I am, too!