This amusing mural includes a dog that is tied to the parking sign. 

Of course, the pub is right across the street from the church.

Down the street from one church is another and a monastery is nearby, too.

We love the cute green letter boxes.

There's a barrel of holy water in case you need some when the church s closed.

A quintessential Irish lass with her puppy and a raven.

In many ways Cork is like any other big city with most of its past buried under modern buildings and cross-culture phenomena blurring its own traditions. 

But the names are familiar and there is a Heineken brewery in town so people won't have to go thirsty.

We catch the bus back to Ringaskiddy and find that we just missed the bus out to Cobh, so we walk into the small town of Ringaskiddy itself to spend the hour.

 
Not much to see here. Somehow the church with the smiling and waving plaster Jesus holding a cross lacks the necessary charm to attract tourists.

There are a couple of old crumbling stone houses and a future Rory McIlroy practicing soccer with his mom.

Cobh was the Titanic's last port of call. The bus drops us off at a train depot with a Titanic Museum. 

This is a beautiful town with a lovely seaside park filled with flowers and families.

St. Colman's Cathedral dominates the town. Go back to the top of this page for the sail-in photos to see that again.

 
The mosaic floor of the cathedral is its own Celtic knot.

Most of the houses have huge chimneys with multiple flues--a fireplace in every room, perhaps. 

A bench where people watched the Titanic depart. Not much of a beach, but we investigate anyway.

We'd seen this tall smoke stack during our sail-in. It seems out of place here in this upscale neighborhood. We ask a number of people about it with no answers until one old-timer said that it's all that's left of an old coal-fired power plant. That makes sense.

A Chinese restaurant now lives in this historic clock tower building.

This is the terminal building with the Titanic Museum. There is a cruise ship here, but not ours.

This smaller church to the side of town has been turned into a museum.

Two German girls on holiday with their parents. A statue of Annie Moore and her two brothers commemorates her as the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island in New York on her 18th birthday. There is a copy of this statue on Ellis Island, as well.

We have enjoyed our first stop here in Ireland and look forward to Dublin, which is farther north along the inside coast of The Republic of Ireland.