Day 4: Monday (6/10/2013)

Another early start, quick breakfast, and on to Cobh.

It's as cold as it looks.

Cobh is a small, windy, cold city about 2.5 hours by car from Kilkenny.  It briefly had a stint as "Queenstown" before the Irish Republic; these days, it has returned to being "Cobh."  The local claim to fame is that the Titanic made its last European stop here before making the fateful voyage to New York.  Well, about halfway to New York.

To commemorate the Titanic, Cobh has built the Titanic Experience, a small museum that's long on videos, reenactments, and information, but falls short on artifacts.  You're given a ticket with the name of a passenger on it, and after going through the exhibits, you're told if you survived.  Surprisingly, both Mary and I did, despite "having" third class tickets.

After finishing the museum, we wandered the town, including up to the massive 19th century Gothic cathedral.  There's just not a lot to recommend a stay in Cobh--the town just feels tired.

From Cobh it was on to Kinsale!  An hour more in the car and we were flipping in side mirrors and driving on sidewalks making our way through the medieval city streets.  By this time, it was pouring rain.  We'd see a lot of rain during the rest of our trip.

After finding our B&B (The Old Presbytery, a really cute little place), we decided to wander the town for a while in the rain.  This was about as fun as it sounds.  The highlight was touring the Medieval Wine Museum, a small 16th century building housing some informative posters about the wine trade through Kinsale in the middle ages.

Dinner at Max's Wine Bar.  Expensive, but absolutely worth it--this was by far the best meal we'd had in Ireland so far.  See my review here.

Once we'd finished, we'd hoped to hit the pubs, but the rain defeated us: by now it was absolutely pouring.  We ended up crashing.