Regal Princess was docked at Cobh itself, meaning we could simply get off and walk into the town, but that’s not always the case if you’re on a cruise ship that claims this as the port on the itinerary. From our balcony in the morning we could see across the water to the island of Haulbowline and beyond that to the right of it was Ringaskiddy where some ships dock instead. As there’s stuff all to see in Ringaskiddy you’re at the mercy of shuttle buses and tour trips to get you to anything interesting if that’s your port, so we were very pleased with our docking location.

Cobh is listed as the port for Cork and the ship was offering excursions to it although you could simply hop on the train right by the ship if you wanted to. The issue we had with excursions on this cruise as a whole was that they were extremely overpriced – we suspect that the captive audience of largely American cruisers visiting quaint old Europe played a role here – so we took a lot fewer of them than we otherwise might have given that we were visiting new ports. There was also the sense that with these cruise ports being technically not that far from us in England we could always return to any that appealed and see them in more detail and for less money. I mean, we won’t because we spend all our free time cruising, but we could, and that’s the important thing. All this is to say that for this, our first time cruising to Ireland and our first time in the port of Cobh, we decided to explore the town rather than head anywhere else.

As it would turn out, our time ashore would end up being a lot shorter than we’d planned because I started to feel unwell during our walk around so this post will contain a lot less than we were hoping to do. We’d intended to visit a museum and possibly find a pub but the combination of putting off both of those until later in the day, only finding one pub open and that claiming that their card machine wasn’t working at the moment and that everyone needed to pay cash (the sign looked like it had been written a long time ago and suggested something dodgy to us), me not feeling well, and this being a Sunday so feck all else was open anyway meant we had to adjust accordingly.

We headed off along the coastline, heading past Kennedy Park, and getting our first look at some of the colourful buildings that Cobh has become famous for.

It was interesting to see a statue in honour of Cobh-born athlete Sonia O’Sullivan simply because on the last cruise we’d been on before this we’d also happened upon another statue of a local athlete, that being Fanny Blankers-Koen in Rotterdam. Perhaps we’ll have to try to find statues of athletes everywhere we travel from now on.

Cobh has a natural harbour that was the reason for it becoming an important port for both naval vessels and, later, for commercial interests, including tourism and emigration. Cobh was the final port of call before the Titanic made her ill-fated trip in 1912, and Cobh was where those rescued from the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 were brought, and you can find numerous plaques, memorials, statues, or references to this sad history associated with the town wherever you walk.

Cobh, in fact, turned out to be very keen to commemorate any person, group, or event, and it was almost impossible to go a couple of minutes without some artwork, sculpture, or marker stone. If you like reading then come to Cobh and walk the streets.

I’ve mentioned already that Cobh is well-known for its colourful houses but when people think of them they’re most likely thinking of the “Deck of Cards” houses which we would see a bit later on. However, along the shoreline part of Cobh to the east of the main part of town we passed Father Corbett Terrace, the owners of which have clearly decided to invest in a job lot of vibrant exterior house paint too. Against the greenery of the hilly backdrop and the blue patches of sky above this looked absolutely beautiful during our time there.

Our destination on this slow walk was the Titanic Memorial Garden and it was a peaceful, pleasant space, but perhaps shouldn’t be the only thing you go to visit if you’re in Cobh because there’s not a whole lot to see there. The garden and views out to the water were nice enough, of course. For us, though, it was nearly the only thing we saw because I was feeling pretty awful at this point and had already decided that plans involving pubs or museums were now thoroughly shelved.

Continuing with the theme of the people of Cobh really invested in having you read things while you’re in their town it was lovely to see a little library near the garden entrance.

I think my wife would have been happy enough to just head back to the ship on the same route we’d come but I tried to eke out a little more from our day in Cobh by heading up the steeper-than-expected road past St Colman’s Cathedral on a slightly more circular route to the port. This is a twentieth century church in the French Gothic style and I would have liked to have popped in for a nose and some photographs but this was a Sunday and Ireland is a religious country so that was never going to happen.

We spotted the “Deck of Cards” houses from here and I figured I could soldier on for just a little longer and head around for some views from different angles. As we started to walk up the road there came the sound of bagpipes playing so we waited while a piper followed by a column of older men with military decorations marched down the road and towards the church. Interesting to experience this sort of thing but when I think of men marching to the sounds of bagpipes in the British Isles I can’t help but get a little twitchy as we’ve a history of groups doing this mainly to wave their dicks around a bit and piss off other groups with differing political views. Admittedly, that’s more a Northern Irish or Scottish thing so likely wasn’t the reason for this display but it’s still a thing I’d like to see stopped altogether. My wife’s views are similar but she’d also like to see bagpipes banned internationally.

The “Deck of Cards” houses were exactly as expected. On a sloping road each building is raised above its neighbour slightly and coloured brightly and differently from those adjoining, and certain views of this were better than others. The cars along the fronts of the houses didn’t help from a tourist photo perspective, but I imagine the owners of the houses consider that secondary to being able to park outside their homes. Although it then makes you wonder why they bothered painting their houses in such a way as to attract people there in the first place then.

Our very truncated visit ashore in Cobh came to an end with a walk past the Cobh Museum (not open on Sundays, naturally, otherwise we’d have stretched our time out a little longer) then a quick look around the Cobh Heritage Centre for some souvenirs before getting back on Regal Princess.

I had a few hours to try to start feeling better before sail away and, thankfully, by the time that came around I was a lot perkier.

The day of arrival in any port can be very important as to your experience there. I’m glad we’d already decided to forego trips further inland given my crappy health on the day but Sunday is definitely not the day to be visiting a country that is still highly religious and largely closed. However, we enjoyed what we saw of Cobh and would love to give it another visit at some point. Cork would be of interest too, but large cities sometimes feel a bit ubiquitous compared to these smaller places with their individual charm.

In the next post in this series it’s time to sail away from Cobh and take a look at the evening’s meal aboard the ship ahead of the second of our Irish ports, its capital, Dublin.

There wasn’t a whole lot to see on the cruise out to the open sea and the general scenery took on a grey tone with splashes of muted colours. Before we moved away from the town, though, we were entranced by the single crewman taking a lot of time to pull in the warning sign that had been hung from the side of the cruise ship while Regal Princess had been docked. The sign indicated that for security reasons other vessels must remain fifty metres away from the ship, although quite what the ship could really do about it in the absence of (obvious) weaponry or a fifty metre prodding pole is another thing entirely.

The photo below doesn’t quite encompass the entirety of our walk along the front of Cobh so despite my unwell state earlier in the day I don’t think we did too bad in at least getting a decent amount of gentle exercise. Although the walk up to the cathedral was perhaps not as gentle as either my wife or I would have liked.

Much of what we could see from our starboard side balcony was off in the distance and often difficult to make out with the weak evening sun in our eyes even from behind thin veils of cloud. However, we did get close enough to Camden Fort Meagher as we passed Ram’s Head to like what we saw. Fortifications of some form or another have existed at this point since the middle of the sixteenth century. The fear of Napoleon led to a large upgrade towards the end of the eighteenth century and in the late nineteenth century the fort had some slipways added to test an early guided torpedo system. By the 1980s the fort was no longer needed militarily and was handed over to the county council who left it to rot, but in 2010 locals started to restore the place for tourism. It certainly looked and sounded interesting enough to warrant a visit should we ever find ourselves back this way in the future.

The main interest on our sail out from Cobh proved to be spotting a group of dolphins not far from the pilot boat that had been shadowing our transit out of the port and waiting to pick up its pilot from the ship. No photos of the dolphins as they were quite some way off, but we enjoyed watching them for several minutes until they seemingly lost interest with all the activity in the harbour.

Some quizzing took place but it was a quiet and fairly early night for us aboard Regal Princess. All that remains in this short post is to show off the dinner in the main dining room on this evening because traditions must be upheld.

I was feeling well enough to try a cocktail or two before bed.

In the next post we arrive at Ireland’s capital, Dublin, where we had an organised tour and some free time arranged and where we were hoping for a more successful day ashore with more to do and see as it wouldn’t be a Sunday. However…

I had been to Dublin a couple of times before, both with parents when I was considerably younger than I am now and also while studying at university (Liverpool, since you asked) when I was merely largely younger than I am now. For my wife, this British Isles cruise on Regal Princess was a chance to actually tick Ireland off the visited list for the first time and while Cobh had been nice enough it was Dublin that she was most looking forward to. The liveliness, the friendliness.

If you’ve never read any of my travelogues before or the About page then don’t worry because not many people have, but you might not then know that when we cruise (our preferred from of travel) we do like to take excursions when hitting new places. For this cruise on Regal Princess, because it was pretty close to home for the most part and targeting a lot of American tourists, we found it difficult to justify the cost of ship tours, particularly seeing as language and general customs would not be a barrier to us getting around. We therefore did our own thing at most of the port stops, but in Dublin that wasn’t the case for a couple of reasons: firstly, we could see that the distance from the port of Dun Laoghaire to Dublin was not inconsiderable so that meant shuttle buses and potentially long queues with a lot of people doing the same; secondly, we saw an excursion that included a short tour in Dublin, some free time in Dublin, and a visit to Powerscourt Estate, and we had reasons for wanting to see that latter location. Secret reasons. So, figuring that we could tick off some sights, have time to see the Book of Kells, have a Guinness (I know, so clichéd), and not be clock-watching for the bus back we booked this excursion.

The usual tour process for Princess Cruises commenced with a gathering aboard, trundling down to the tender boat, tendering into the port, hopping aboard the tour bus, and making our way into the Irish capital. It was on the bus that we were told that most of Ireland was closed for the day thanks to the bank holiday. Bugger. Still, shouldn’t affect what we wanted to do, we thought. And then we were told that students were protesting about the treatment of Palestinians by the genocidal Israeli regime so the Book of Kells was off-limits for anyone who wanted to look at it. Bugger, again. We supported the students and the Palestinians, and we still do, but it was bloody annoying to effectively visit Ireland for two days and find it shut.

Anyway, on with the guided tour part. We got off the bus at Merrion Square, a Georgian garden square dating from the late eighteenth century, and the townhouses on three of its sides that we’d be taking more of a look at (than we wanted) all date from the same period. First, though, we had pointed out to us St Stephen’s Church, known as the Pepper Canister Church for obvious reasons, and the statue of the engineer William Dargan, designer and builder of large parts of Ireland’s railway system and several bridges, one of which was in the city.

The main purpose of this visit to the square was to admire the Georgian buildings and doors that have achieved a level of fame of their own, and yes, they were very nice, but once you’ve seen a few then do you really need to see more? Apparently, on this tour, you do, and so we did, and it seemed to go on and on. Some of this might have been my general feeling of grumpiness at what was shaping up to be a disappointing visit to Dublin.

Some of the tour also touched on famous inhabitants of the houses over the years, with the most notable being Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats, but there seemed a lot more about the door designs and colours than I think most people were interested in. I like architecture but this wasn’t described as an architectural excursion and you could sense some fidgeting amongst the passengers after a while.

As Merrion Square was where we’d need to meet back for the bus to take us onto the afternoon’s part of the excursion we were then given the option of heading off for some free time on our own, but as the guide was heading in the direction we wanted to walk anyway we tagged along with the portion of the group who’d remained for a bit.

The modern building below is the library attached to Trinity College. Knowing that behind it, in another building, the Book of Kells was laughing at us not being able to see it was not enjoyable.

Lovely human being Taylor Swift was due to visit Dublin as part of her Eras Tour the following year and we saw a dad and his young daughter stringing up some temporary sheeting to start work on some artwork we assumed was for it on the street. We’d see the nearly-finished piece when we came back past this point later on.

The Tart with the Cart is the local name for the Molly Malone statue, the point at which we decided to explore a little more on our own with what little time we had. As is the way with statues like this all around the world there’s a tendency to rub parts, for luck in most cases, or because people are generally perverted little oiks who objectify women in this particular instance.

We continued towards Temple Bar because it’s apparently a fairly popular tourist trap if it’s open. Just on the outskirts of this neighbourhood an interesting sculpture caught my eye. This is the Tree of Gold (or Crann an Óir, and don’t ask me how to pronounce that), commissioned by Ireland’s Central Bank as a public artwork to commemorate Ireland receiving European City of Culture status in 1991.

Temple Bar sits on the south bank of the River Liffey so we had a chance to see both of these Dublin landmarks (okay, one’s more a watermark, but you know what I mean), and there was a lot of colourful street art around, which we always enjoy. We were never going to get the full feel of the place on an overcast Monday afternoon when nearly everything was closed but on the plus side we also didn’t get robbed blind at any of the pubs there.

We had time to stop somewhere for a drink and some food – the excursion did not include a meal despite its reasonably long duration – and we figured we’d head back towards Merrion Square where we’d seen an open pub on the corner just so that we wouldn’t be pressed for time getting back to the bus. The Taylor Swift artwork was coming along well.

The pub we stopped at was called The Sin Bin – a sporting reference, as you could probably tell – and it was large, clean, but understandably a bit soulless there with some perfunctory service when we popped in as we were a couple of maybe eight people in the place. My wife opted for a cider while I fulfilled our legal obligations and ordered a Guinness and they were both okay, but nothing wonderful, and we’ve had better of both back home in England many times. The food we ordered, however, was excellent, and huge. We struggled to finish these plates between us.

Before the bus turned up to pick us up from the corner of Merrion Square I grabbed a quick shot of a sculpture of its most famous former resident.

In the next post in this British Isles cruise series we’ll be concluding our tour with a visit to Powerscourt Estate and Gardens.

We like country estates and gardens so it should be no surprise to see us picking this particular tour option from those available on this port stop, but anyone who knows us in real life will know the real reason we wanted to visit Powerscourt Estate and Gardens. You don’t know us in real life, though, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Ooh! Secrecy! And on this, my site, where I tell you things you don’t need to know or don’t want to know all the time!?

Powerscourt Estate stands on the site of a former thirteenth century castle although much of what’s there today, both in the buildings and the formal and landscaped gardens, owes its look to extensive changes undertaken in the eighteenth century and renovations in the 1990s after a serious fire in the 1970s. The Palladian architecture and style of gardens were very familiar to us with lots in common with many of the National Trust properties we’d visited over the years in England.

We didn’t spend a lot of time in the main building as there wasn’t a whole lot to see there with the gardens being the main draw for this visit. Actually, one of the main draws of the estate is the famous Powerscourt Waterfall, Ireland’s second highest, and something we’d assumed we’d be able to see. But, following the theme of the day in Ireland – mild disappointment – we were told that it was possible to walk to it but not within the time limit we had for our visit. More on that time limit later.

This post is therefore mainly photographs from our wander around the gardens with a few elements pointed out. If you like landscape and formal gardens then it’s a fabulous place to take a stroll.

We started off above the Triton Lake with views down to it and some lovely landscape sights across the countryside.

The black and white pebbles arranged to form patterns reminded us of the Risseu we’d seen while visiting the Ligurian region of Italy in 2019, and particularly our trip to Camogli.

We first entered Tower Valley, named for the tower within it, Pepperpot Tower, itself named for the condiment container after which it was designed. Yes, really. Scenes from the TV series The Tudors were filmed here, although a great many TV series and films can claim to have used some portion of Powerscourt Estate as a shooting location over the years.

A meandering, downward-sloping walk along trails and past a variety of trees, bushes, and flowers brought us above the gorgeous Japanese Gardens. This was easily the prettiest and most interesting part of Powerscourt Gardens although the time of year and general overcast conditions of the day might have accentuated its vibrancy.

Fans of mossy grottos – that’s everybody – will enjoy the mossy grotto just off the Japanese Gardens.

We walked in a broadly circular route, taking us around the far side of the lower lake where we could look back up towards the building that we’d entered. The trees and some of the views through them were genuinely spectacular from here.

I can’t say we were expecting to see a pet cemetery on the grounds of Powerscourt Estate and if I had expected it then I’d have also been expecting to find it a little creepy, but it was actually quite heartwarming to see the names and dates and some of the writing on the grave markers on this small plot of land.

Another lake brought us to a small formal garden area adjoining the main building at the top of the estate and gardens and brought this walk to an end.

Time limits. Time. Time and excursions. There’s either never enough or there’s too much, and this day’s excursion as a whole was a great example of this problem. Of course you have to compromise when you’re on a group tour but we weren’t alone in thinking this while we waited for our bus to return because we got talking to fellow passengers who said the same thing. Our conclusion from the full day of first visiting Dublin, having free time there, then heading off on this excursion to Powerscourt Estate and Gardens was that we could have done with perhaps half an hour more in Dublin and half an hour less at the gardens. The gardens were lovely but we’d seen all we could really see well within the amount of time we had to spend and ended up just hanging around at the end. We had too much time at Powerscourt for what we could admire in the gardens, yet not enough to get out to the waterfall and back, and we felt that with this in mind we would have appreciated longer in Dublin to perhaps hit a museum.

But we did enjoy Powerscourt Estate and Gardens, and later in the year with more colour and interest around and the likelihood of a warmer day and slower walking then the time there might have felt more suitable and made the cruise excursion overall feel better-balanced.

In the next short post in this Regal Princess British Isles cruise travelogue series there are some brief views of Dún Laoghaire as we tender back to the ship – and some thoughts about that – along with the evening meal aboard as we head off towards the next port of call, Belfast.

There was a fair old queue to get back onto the tender boats to the cruise ship because the cruise lines do like to arrange for as many tours as possible to finish at the same time for some perverted reason. But, when we did finally reach the front of the queue it was to find one boat had just left and another just arrived so that gave us the chance to sit up on top if we wanted. I wanted. My wife did not because it was cold so she stayed below.

I’d initially thought that the modern concrete building in the photo below and the tower were all one thing, and assumed it was all a fancy, brutalist church from the 60s. In fact, the sloping structure in the foreground belongs to the library and cultural centre, built in the early 2000s and opened to the public in late 2014, while the tower is that of a former church and now maritime museum. Just the sort of thing we’d visit on a return trip.

It was a fairly slow ride back to Regal Princess on the tender boat so that the breeze and choppy waves didn’t cause too much trouble for those aboard. As expected, it was cold on the top of the boat but the views were fabulous. One of our fellow passengers was up there in just his t-shirt and was definitely braving it out.

There’s not a lot to report for the evening on the ship as there wasn’t much to see in terms of sailaway views from our anchored position off the coast. Because we’d eaten so much at lunch in Dublin, however, we decided to skip the main dining room meal and take advantage of one of the free “casual dining” options that are included when you purchase the Princess Plus drinks package (and we always do). And so it was that we enjoyed a meal at Alfredo’s with a glass of wine (or two).

In the next post in this British Isles cruise series we’ll be hitting Belfast, and unlike the first occasion three years earlier when we took an excursion, this time we’d be exploring on our own and would start with a walk to and visit of the fabulous Crumlin Road Gaol.