Debbie's Doings: A man named Dan, and other Irish tales

Me enjoying bread and cheese--what I've been dreaming of for two months now!

Ok, I'm sure you all want to know how my Irish holiday is going. Well, maybe you do! If not, then I'm not sure why you're reading this! I've been here long enough now to find my way around downtown Cork without getting lost. Today I went to Penneys for some wellies so I can walk where I want in the country and not get my jeans soaked and I'm proud to say that I made it there and home without getting lost! Unlike yesterday.

Yesterday I decided to go to Cobh. This is a small town on the coast that is only about 40 minutes away by bus. I left Siobhan's flat armed with a city map and an idea of what direction I needed to go in order to reach the bus station. For those of you who have wandered around Seoul for hours with me will know that I have no sense of direction. AT ALL. Yeah, I got lost in Cork, with a map. Turns out I was going the completely opposite direction. So an hour later I got to the bus station only to be redirected to the train station to catch my bus to Cobh (don't ask why, I'm not sure). Finally I get to Cobh and visit a nice museum, walk around the town, get a bag of chips for a mid-afternoon snack, purchase postcards and then groove out to my music waiting for my bus back to Cork. The bus driver thought I was amusing with my music. So why did I go to Cobh? Oh yes- I should tell you that. Cobh used to be called Queenstown and was the last port of call for the Titanic. It was also the destination port for the Lusitania. Quite an important little town if you ask me. The museum was pretty interesting. Full of artifacts and knickknacks from the two ships and the early 1900s. I liked it, even though I was caught in the rain two times. I fixed that today though by purchasing boots that I can tuck my jeans into!

On Monday I went to Kinsale...well, I was dropped off by Siobhan on her way to the beach to go surfing again (crazy girl). It's a nice little harbor town here and the weather was getting along with me well that day. I remembered why I like museums when I went to the old tower museum in town- mannequins. I really liked them when I was in the UK and am happy to report that museums in Ireland have them also! Really they make great photo opportunities. Anyway, the museum used to be a prison which held American prisoners during the American Revolution. Also in Kinsale I stopped for lunch in a pub and while I was listening to jazz music by a couple of musicians I met Dan. A man named Dan grabbed my hand on my way in to tell me how much he liked my hat. He really liked it alot (so do I, so I'm glad he didn't ask for it!). He told me he used to have a hat, 27 years ago. He liked his hat alot, but it got wet and he lost it (I'm not quite sure if he lost it because it was wet or if these were two separate incidents). In any case, he hugged me, told me the hat suited me very well and then asked if I would hug him for 27 years. I told him I was really hungry and wanted to eat. So poor, drunk Dan without a hat let me go to eat my sandwich and drink my pint.

Lastly I'll add some of my favorite pictures so far. I haven't edited my photos from Cobh, so none of those are here. But you can look at the rest of them on my picasa page: http://picasaweb.google.com/debinoxford.