Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Yesterday morning I figured I'd head down to the Cork City St. Patrick's Day parade. The parade was pretty good, even though as a person not originally from the area, I didn't quite understand all of the groups that were in it (i.e. the giant monsters and such). You can see the pictures from the parade here. There was no floats, which for a city the size of Cork I was hoping that there might be, but it was still entertaining I guess. Sort of like a glorified Mystic parade, minus the 50 fire trucks.

After the parade, the weather was fairly nice (see: not raining), so I decided I'd head down to Kinsale to see what it looks like in the daytime. After traveling down a windy, narrow road for about 10 miles, I was able to find my way to the old fort that is there. I have posted pictures I took of the fort along with other pictures of Kinsale. The fort was pretty cool...there were some great views of Kinsale as the fort is at a higher elevation than the town and it's positioned across the harbor. After a tour of the fort, I headed into the town and walked around for a bit. My conclusion from looking around Kinsale is that it is Ireland's version of Mystic. It's pretty much the same idea, as it's a small town on the water, with small shops and bars. It was good to see the ocean again though.

Today I was going to do a bit more traveling around Cork, but the weather seems to be out of it's mind currently. Since I woke up, I've seen blue sky 3 times, but it's also down-poured twice. I'd prefer not to be caught in a storm if I'm walking around trying to explore somewhere. Maybe tomorrow the weather will be more cooperative...we'll see.