Cobh, Ireland

 Wednesday July 23, 2025 

Woohoo! Today we arrived in a new place we’ve never been before. I love that feeling of excitement when you realize that today is the day you get to explore a place you’ve never been before!

Today we docked in Cobh, Ireland (pronounced Cove… I think). There are a few options you could decide between at this port.

1. The one most people are talking about is an excursion to Blarney Castle and to kiss the Blarney Stone. Steve and I decided that a germaphobe and someone prone to vertigo didn’t need to kiss the Blarney Stone. If you don’t know, you have to lay down and hang your head back (very bad for people prone to vertigo) and then kiss the stone (thousands of people’s lips every day touch the stone (very bad for germaphobes) and the whole point is to get the “gift of the gab”. I think if you know us well, you know that neither of us are in need of this special gift 😉
2. You could take a train (about 25 minutes) into the city of Cork. I don’t really know anything about Cork.
3. You could just walk off the ship and walk around Cobh, which is 200 metres away. (I also didn’t really know anything about Cobh!) We opted for #3 because we didn’t have any reason to go to Cork or Cobh so decided to do the easiest and cheapest one!

We quite enjoyed Cobh. It is a pretty small town with a population of just over 14,000 people.

Cobh was changed it's name to Queenstown in 1849 to commemorate a visit from Queen Victoria, then changed its name back to Cobh in 1921 when the Irish Free State was established.

One of the towns claims to fame (or infamy) is that it was the last port of call for the Titanic before its maiden voyage. There is an "immersive Titanic experience" in Cobh which we decided not to do as we've seen Titanic exhibits before.

We decided to walk up to the cathedral first and then come back down to walk around the town and the waterfront.

St. Colman's Cathedral is up the hill and visible from down by the water. It is an imposing looking structure in this little town. 

There she is up at the top of the hill!

Construction on this cathedral was started in 1868, but not completed until 1919 due to revisions of plans and increasing costs. It's steeple is 91.4 metres tall which makes it the tallest church in Ireland! Another interesting fact about this cathedral is that it contains Ireland's only carillon with 49 bells. That is the largest carillon in the whole British Isles!

View back to the ship from the top of the hill.

As I was relaxing on the front steps waiting for Steve to take photos (this is what I do about 1/4 of the time we are travelling) I realized they were having a mass, so suggested to Steve we come back later to see the inside. Sitting and waiting for Steve is when I get to do one of my favourite past times - people watching. There was no lack of interesting people to watch today!

After this we walked a bit through what I would call the upper town and then decided to head down the road to the cemetery. I thought it would be closer to the church but it was actually 1.3 km away and a bit of a walk uphill.

We walked through some residential areas and even saw some schools. This is always interesting for us to see how the schools look in other countries. No surprises here, they looked similar to the older schools where we live (think South Park).

I’m guessing not too many tourists walk back this far because one lady who was walking her dog actually asked us if we were on holiday. When we said yes, she asked where we were staying. She seemed quite surprised we were from the ship. I expect most people from the ship don’t venture that far in, but she cheerily let us know we would be perfectly safe in that area. Now, it hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t be safe there, but it was nice to know we were indeed safe!

We finally found the cemetery and enjoyed a walk around looking at the headstones. As we expected, the cemetery was beautifully kept and adorned with many special little items in the grave area. We noticed that multiple family members could be in one plot and they just added on names to the tombstones. I thought it was interesting that they didn’t often include the date of birth, just the age, the date of death, and often their home address. The address was a bit of a surprise to me. 

Side note: Some of the tombstones listed the birth and death dates as sunrise and sunset which I thought was very beautiful!

I’m not sure why, but both Steve and I really enjoy walking around cemeteries when we are travelling. I imagine it will be quite the day, when we one day find some of our own ancestors in a European cemetery.

After this we turned around and headed back down to the main town. Why is it, that the way back always seems so much shorter than the way there?

We made a quick stop in the beautiful cathedral...

As we walked through the town we were on the hunt for a bakery to have another meat pie like we did in Weymouth… but no such luck.

The town was quite pretty and had many colourful buildings and boats.

I did remember to buy postcards for school! I’m buying 3 or 4 from each place I visit these days so I’ll have them for our last five years of teaching. The kids love it when we share a postcard from somewhere we’ve been!

I also did one more impulse buy of a merino wool sweater for myself. It was just so beautiful I couldn’t resist. I chose green which feels appropriate since Ireland is called the Emerald Isle.

My new beautiful sweater!

We made one last stop in the waterfront park and then headed back to the ship. 

If we came back to this port again, I would probably visit Cork, because I think we’ve seen all there is to see in Cobh. That being said I thought Cobh was a beautiful, colourful Irish town, and I’m glad that is the choice we made for today.

When we came back to the ship we did a little eating, a little resting, afternoon tea on the balcony, and a little more eating.

Side note: There was a local band that gave us a little concert as we sailed away today! I loved this!

Note to self: I bought some tea in London at Tesco’s. The name is Twinings Pear and Apple Green Tea. See if you can find it at home because it is delicious!

Tonight the show is a ventriloquist, which I dislike even more than I like magic, so I’m crossing my fingers that Steve doesn’t want to go see it 😉

Update: Steve did want to see it (so we went) and it wasn’t as bad as the magic… so that is saying something...

Tomorrow we have a day in Dublin!