Cork City Tour

This morning I walked over to UCC for a campus tour provided by one of the local church groups. I got to see the inside of the Honan chapel, which by the way is GORGEOUS. The floor is decorated with colorful tiles that come together to form all kinds of wildlife. The isle consists of fishes moving upstream, and towards the pulpit are birds, deer, oxen, and squirrels, all which surround scriptures in Gaelic. Surrounding the entire building are stain glass windows depicting various saints and hundreds of different images crowding each other within the oblong window pane. Below each window is a golden square with a scene from the twelve stations of the cross painted on it. The architecture of the building itself is very exquisite looking, having been carved into pillars and Celtic designs on the inside.

After viewing the chapel, we all headed towards the Elizabeth Fort, which was a wall used to protect the city. Along the wall are narrow slots built so that archers could shoot from within. At the moment it is part of the enclosure where the Garda (police) station sits. After that, we looped back around towards an old brewery that was sadly closed a few years ago, and then we ended the tour at the city park, where we got to see the last of the original wall that protected Cork during medieval times.

That was pretty much the highlight of my day. I went to the store to pick up some plastic containers (I'm making spaghetti tonight and needed to put the leftovers somewhere), and some Coke. On my way home I almost bumped into a girl who came out of a rather small coffee shop, and stopped in there to get myself some hot chocolate and a toasted bagel ham sandwich.

Not sure how I'm going to spend the rest of my weekend. The roommates took off to Kilkenny for some castle sight seeing last night, and yesterday I wasn't feeling too well. There's the Crawford Art Gallery up near UCC that I have yet to look into, so I might do that tomorrow or late in the afternoon. I also want to go back to Fota Wildlife Park, but I'm sorta worn out from walking and standing for three hours today.