Walking Cork City, Ireland

Jen on the River Lee this morning.

Jen and I are currently in Cork, Ireland. I'm here to teach students at U. Cork next week, but until then we're going to enjoy the area. We arrived at the hotel last night at 10pm, after a completely exhausting trip: we flew out of Seattle at 2pm on Wednesday and landed in Amsterdam nine hours later (after no sleep) at 8am on Thursday. We then took the train into the city where we walked and saw the sights for 7 hours, before returning to the airport for our late flight into Cork. It was a brutal day, making for a hard sleep last night. Today we walked all over Cork -- a really nice, bustling small city -- and tomorrow we'll drive out of town to see the country-side and do some more walking. Here are a couple of surprises from the day. First, it's Easter weekend, which is big in Ireland, and because it's Good Friday, it's illegal to sell alcohol of any kind in the country, so all of the pubs are closed. Second, I saw many names on bars and house fronts that are common in my home town of Butte, Montana: Maloney, Ryan, O'Sullivan, Harrington, Clark, and Murphy, to name a few. 

At coffee after arrival in Amsterdam.

Our main stop in Amsterdam was the modern art museum, which was really good.

Amsterdam tulips.

I've never seen so many bikes (or leaning houses) as in Amsterdam.

Walking Cork streets today

Cork city center.

St. Finbarr Cathedral, Jen in the lower-right.

One of many excellent looking pubs with doors locked for Good Friday.

We found a couple of great vintage shops (this one with great early 80's records).
Jen said this is the kind of face that makes her have to explain me to her friends. 

A cool art piece at the U. Cork museum.

U. Cork's central square.