DAY THIRTY-TWO: CORK TO KILKENNY

Coming soon to this page:  A recap of Cork nightlife and the road trip to Kilkenny, including Cobh and the Rock of Cahsel.  But first, a few long overdue words about public restrooms in the U.K. and Scotland.

Like you, I always expect the worst from public restrooms — poor maintenance, dated facilities, god awful aromas, we’ve all accepted this as the norm.  I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way.  Come to Europe.  Despite what impressions you may have taken away from repeated viewings of Trainspotting (recycled joke, sorry), the public facilities here are almost unanimously pleasant, tech-forward and while maybe not sweet-smelling, at least hardly every bad enough to make you foreswear eating for the next six hours.

From my first visit to that space-age toilette minutes after landing in Geneva in 2013, I’ve been blown away by European restrooms. Be they toilettes, loos or banos, they are almost uniform in their quality. 

Small digression here, because it’s been on my mind for the past week.  On the date of my 48th birthday, in May of 2013, I had been in the following countries:  the U.S., Canada, Australia (for my post-college graduation vision quest).  I was once in Tijuana for two hours while visiting San Diego but don’t count that as being in another country.  I probably didn’t even urinate there.

Since July of 2013 (the first sabbatical), I’ve been to Switzerland (three times), Italy (also three times), France (ditto, but two of them were just for a day), Germany, Mexico and now England, Scotland and Ireland.  Once when I was tagging along with Sandra Bullock on a work trip, I was in Switzerland, France and Germany on the same day.  At one point, half of my body was in Switzerland and the other half was in Germany.  This is nothing I ever expected or planned or even considered.  It blows me away.  

I owe it all to Sandra Bullock.  Without her, I’d be running around talking about that one time my family went to Niagara Falls when I was eight.  Which was pretty cool, by the way; no less cool for everything that came after it.  

Back to the bathrooms, and then today’s journey.

Here’s why Euro bathrooms are so cool:  first, in keeping with the EU’s (vaguely smug; I noticed, Europe) commitment to environmentalism, they’ve completely divorced themselves from the paper towel paradigm and mostly from the ineffective blower malaise that dogs so many U.S. facilities.  Instead, users are treated to sleek, effective Dyson hand dryers, the kind where if you jam your hands in and count to 14 while slowly drawing them back out, they will emerge completely dry.  No wringing them out, wiping them on your pants, no risk of shaking someone’s hand and having them immediately know where you just were.

Even the restrooms at the Rock of Cashel are sublime.

And then there are the stalls.  No tilt-up, half-wall sad attempts at delivering privacy, they are essentially small rooms with solid core doors and walls that go all the way to the ceiling, providing enough privacy to satisfy even the most anxious among us, i.e. me.  Once inside, you do your business, choose the intensity of your flush, pull open the door, emerge from your cocoon, wash your hands and, 14 seconds of Dyson wizardry later, you’re out.  Using the bathroom in the British Isles is a joy, except for the part where you have to find it by asking for the “toilet,” which is a bit on the nose if you ask me.  

PSA concluded.  Onto our day.

Actually, lets start with last night.  Stung by what everyone still thinks was an incomplete experience thanks to our poor research entering Cork, Sandra Bullock and Princess Grace dove into their guidebooks and Google, hoping to maximize the trip between Cork and Kilkenny, our next stop.  Unfortunately, all of their searching gave us a Sophie’s Choice: Kinsale or Cobh?  Both charming fishing villages, both a half-hour from Cork, both excellent choices for a mid-trip first stop.  After that, should we continue up the coast to Dunvargen and Waterford, where crystal that is not actually made in Ireland anymore is sold, or turn inland and visit the imposing Rock of Cashel?  Fishing villages are nice, but it’d been several days since our last castle and we were starting to feel withdrawals from the lack of drafty rooms and piles of rocks in our life.  What to do.

Enter the O’Flynn brothers, who spent yesterday playing golf in the rain and then stumbled over us last night at the Sin e pub, where we were all crammed into a tiny room watching traditional (trad) Irish music (and occasionally rolling our eyes at it, if we were under the age of 30 and someone told us to shush).  The three brothers, ages 57, 60 and 61, were eager Yodas to our road trip Lukes.   They gave us this one crucial bit of advice:  “If you enjoy history,” said the youngest, most roguish brother, “go to Cobh.  If you want more of a tourist experience, go to Kinsale.”  

Cobh it is.  But what about stop #2?  Cashel or coast?  Pending.

What is there to see and do in Cobh, which was once known as Queenstown until the fight for independence led to it reclaiming its Irish name in 1921?   Located a mere 24 minutes from Cork, Cobh is a very small port that served as the launch point for some 3 million Irish emigrants between 1815 and 1970, this from a country whose population peaked at 8 million.  Poor living conditions, bleak future prospects and especially the potato famine sent Irish citizen by the literal boatload to the U.S., Canada and, if they were convicts, Australia.  En route they endured horrible conditions and sometimes died.

Cobh was also the Titanic’s first (and only) stop on its ill-fated maiden voyage to New York and where the Lusitania, “mistaken” for a warship by a German U-Boat, was sunk in 1915.  In each case, over 1,000 passengers died.  Lusitania survivors were ferried to the Cunard Line office in Cobh (then Queenstown) and put up in a local hotel.  Both the Cunard office and the hotel still stand. 

Adios, boring old men; hello,
star-crossed lover.

How did I become such an instant expert on maritime disasters?  By spending an hour at the Cobh Heritage Museum.  For a mere 8 EU you get a ticket and a persona and then try to find your character's story in the museum.  Farewell, middle-aged Jewish man; you are now Denis Lennon, 20 year-old would-be suitor of 18 year-old Mary Mullin.  Having missed an earlier boat to New York, the young couple boarded the Titanic one step ahead of Mary’s shotgun-weilding older brother, the star-crossed young lovers are said to be the inspiration for Jack and Rose, the central characters of James Cameron’s treacly Titanic movie.  

What else is there to do in Cobh?  You can stroll its quaint streets, spotting historic sites like the Cunard office.  You can enjoy a haloumi sandwich.  You can go into St. Colman’s church, but not until the wedding party and their guests have finished the receiving line and boarded their awaiting buses.  Until that happens, you can stand around and gawk, making quips about the wedding guests, or make a mental note that, no matter how cool that new blue blazer and pants you bought is, it is no substitute for a suit.  Thank you, wedding guest in a maroon coat and gray pants.  Your humiliation is my cautionary tale.

No tourists are getting into that church today.

Eventually, you can enter the church, and then take approximately 10 million photos of the “deck of cards,” a row of colorful homes one might call “postcard row” if that didn’t make him feel JUST LIKE the tourists who come to San Francisco and take 10 million photos of the houses across the street from Alamo Square.

After Cobh, I handed the driving chores over to Peter O’Toole and moved over to shotgun  O’Toole, who’d driven recently in New Zealand and answered off-handedly “sure!” every time I asked if he’d be okay driving, quickly learned that all of the cool elegance, great hair and state-of-the-art athleisure wear in the world will not make Ireland’s roads any wider or less confusing.  From my seat on the left, and later in the back seat after the next stop, I closed my eyes and sighed with relaxation.

Totally not Postcard Row.

As for the coast or Cashel question, Cobh ran Sandra Bullock’s and my roster of quaint seaside Irish villages to four, and we had already bought crystal  -- that was actually made in Ireland -- so we opted for the Rock of Cashel, a truly ominous-looking ruined castle/fortress that rises high out of the Tipperary countryside and does include guided tours if you have more than an hour to spare.  We didn’t.  We wanted to get to Kilkenny in time for me to type all of this stuff down, for Sandra Bullock to luxuriate in the shower and to park hastily in a loading zone rather than try to find a space in front of O’Toole and Grace’s hotel, hop back into the car and map our hotel, only to find that it was  200 feet in the other direction.

I’ll throw a few Cashel photos in here anyway, or at least one, because it really is imposing.  And there’s multi-hued green fields all around it, but those pictures, naturally, are disappointing.

Today’s numbers:

4 — very small pieces of salmon in Sandra Bullock’s salmon pasta last night.  The pasta itself, was excellent.

60 — amount of time, in minutes, you are allowed to park for free on the street in Cobh before you have to pay.  After that: one EU per hour.  But if you just park down the street there, it’s free.  Why waste a Euro?

2 — soft-serve ice cream cones purchased by Sandra Bullock and me after looking at the Rock of Cashel while Princess Grace and Peter O’Toole’ ate an apple and a protein bar, respectively.

1 -- really great "imagine this" posed by Princess Grace during lunch when she said, 'Can you imagine how chaotic it must've been here with all of these people crammed into this small town, waiting to get on boats?"

11 — length, in minutes, of the nap I took while “watching” the informational video at the Rock of Cashel.

8 — weeks remaining until the young girl who sat down next to Peter O’Toole last night at the Sin e pub visits her Aunt in San Rafael.  She can’t (expletive) wait.

Sandra Bullock just emerged looking refreshed from the shower, though she mentioned it’s got some “temperature control issues.”  Time to wrap this up and go iron a shirt.  Kilkenny is our home for the next three days.  Pray for sun.