We had always planned on visiting Cork, which is the European City of Culture for 2005. Cork is about a four hour drive from Dublin so we decided to pack overnight bags and leave most of our things at our home exchange property.
After cool sidetrips to the Irish National Stud and the fairy-tale ruins of Cashel, we made it to Cork at about 4 PM. We went to the tourist office, which referred a number of budget hotels. Wow - even budget accomodations are expensive in Cork - probably because we are in the high-season and Cork is such an attraction this year. Anyway, the cheapest en-suite room (at the Killarney House, at left) we could find was 130 Euros a night. We should have booked ahead.
The accomodations were good, if small. But I have become used to our kitchen and spacious accomodations at our home swap property, so I am a bit spoiled. One thing I forgot about hotels is that you are subject to a lot of noise - the people above us woke up at 5 AM and it sounded like they were doing construction up there! I could not get back to sleep.
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