The beds at the Kingsley Hotel were pretty damn good since we didn’t wake up until 11:45am. Checkout was at noon (doh) so I called reception to ask if we could have a late checkout but was denied, with the reason that the hotel was fully booked due to the bank weekend holiday and that they needed the rooms back to clean for the next guests.

We had big plans to hit the gym and pool at the hotel, but weren’t deterred with the setback. We packed our bags, loaded everything in the car, then proceeded to the gym. After hitting the cardio and weights for an hour we then hopped into the pool, followed by a little time in the hot tub to get the full hotel experience. :) We then showered down, changed into street clothes, and we were on the road again!

Originally we were planning to hit the gym and pool in the morning, but since we started late we decided to forego seeing Cork since we had a long drive ahead to our next stop, Kenmare, and wanted to stop in the nearby town of Cobh first.

To get to Cobh, we took a ferry from Cork. It’s a short ferry…only taking maybe 7 minutes to cross the river.

Cobh is a pretty small town, so it was quite a sight to see a humongous 200 foot high cruise ship docked at the harbor. I’ve never been on a cruise before so I don’t know a large cruise ship from another, but this one looked pretty gigantic. It was also very clean and looked quite new. In fact, it was brand new as we found out. It was a Royal Caribbean cruise ship “Independence of the Seas” which turns out to be the largest passenger ship in the world (accommodating > 4300 passengers & > 1300 crew); docked in a little town in Ireland as part of its maiden voyage. The town was quite lively & a lot of people were in the streets, partly due to the “bank holiday” weekend and partly due to the cruise ship leaving port that evening at 6pm.

We went into the Cobh Heritage Center, which contained a small exhibit on the history of the town’s role in emigration and transportation (“transporting” Irish criminals to Australia). Many Irish last stepped foot on Irish soil here before emigrating to America and beyond. Those ships came to be known as “coffin ships” since the voyage to America was perilous and conditions aboard the ships were horrible for the 7 month journey across the Atlantic.

After the Heritage Center, we were too late to visit the Cobh Museum, which closed at 5pm, so we ate a late lunch and then walked up the hill to St. Colman’s Church to watch the cruise ship off. This ship was absurdly immense, dwarfing large container ships in the harbor like they were little gnats.

We left Cobh after watching the cruise ship leave port, and instead of going back across the ferry, we went an alternate route towards Kenmare.

We got into Kemare and checked into the hotel, then drove a short distance back into the town center to eat dinner. None of the sit down restaurants really had anything on the menus that really appealed to us (for the price that they were asking), so we ended up in some burger joint. The next morning we were doing the Ring of Kerry which was yet another (!) long day of driving.