Ireland - Day 14

September 3, 2025: We visited two cities today, one by bus and one by train. We started the morning taking the Cobh Connect Route 200 to Cobh. Cobh is a colorful seafront town in County Cork, famous as the last port of call of the Titanic in 1912. Sitting on the edge of Cork Harbor, it’s known for its brightly painted houses and the striking St. Colman’s Cathedral. Our main reason for visiting Cobh was to go to the Titanic Experience. We heard it was work the short trip. As part of the ticket you take a guided tour that takes you back in time to retrace the footsteps of our Queenstown passengers. You are given a ticket when you arrive that has the name of one of the passengers and which class of the ship you are on. You find out at the end, as part of the self-guided part of the experience, what happened to that passenger after the sinking of the Titanic. I was Daisy Minahan, a first class passenger and Jimm was Bernard McCoy, a third class passenger. Daisy was an Irish immigrant who had been visiting family in Ireland. She was returning to Green Way, Wisconsin where she worked as a schoolteacher. She was traveling with her brother and his wife. She survived, but her brother was lost at sea. Bernard was traveling with his two sisters. They had gotten in a life boat. With the decision to stay onboard or jump into the ocean, Bernard chose the latter and miraculously, he was found by the lifeboat carrying his sisters. They brought him aboard and he survived although he had many health problems afterward.

We took the bus back to Cork after our tour and grabbed something for lunch at the local Dunnes Store near our flat. I was feeling kind of weak and achy from the cold I picked up so I took a quick nap before we headed out for our next part of the day’s itinerary, which was to take the train to Midleton, Ireland where the Jameson Midleton Distillery is located. We were scheduled to take a cocktail making master class. Our Jameson Craft Ambassador was Thomas and we ended up being the only two in class! So we had an amazing experience learning to make a whiskey sour and an old fashioned. It turns out that Thomas is going to be in Portugal while we are there at an event in Cascais called “Chefs on Fire.” We are going to try and find him while we are there.

After taking the train back to Cork, we stopped for dinner at a place called Thompsons which was not our first choice but we did not have reservations and could not get into the restaurant Thomas had recommended called Gallaghers. The food was fine, but not memorable. Tomorrow it is off to see the famous Blarney Castle!