Kinsale and Cove with my Philly pals

Don looks like he is having a bit of trouble with his fork here. I thought at first that he had it stuck in his pint. When you have your eyes closed, you can never tell where you will stick it.

A fishing trawler, heading back out to sea from the pier right in front of our hotel yesterday morning (Sat).

I arrived out of the hotel just in time to catch Don preparing to take off from our hotel yesterday morning. You can see Pat in the back, with Shirley, as she anxiously looks out to see if i am coming.
 "I am over this side Pat".

Our destination yesterday was the port of Cove at the entrance to Cork harbour. In order to  get to Cove, we had to cross the Lee River Estuary at Passage, and here you see Gene and Pat, and Shirley and Don, waiting for the ferry to arrive. You can actually see the ferry in the background here.

Here we are, approaching the far side on our ferry to Cove.

My friends, sitting in front of the bronze of Annie Moore and her two young brothers at the Heritage centre in Cove. These were the first people to register at Ellis Island in 1892. (The Moore family i mean). Here again i had an argument with Gene who claimed that his ancestors registered years before Annie and her brothers. When  i told him that Ellis Island was not open at that time, he just said that some Indians were doing it long before that. He said that when his people arrived way back, there was no money involved in their registration and that they just gave them a few bottles of Guinness and that did the trick. I just gave up. This man should run for President.

Gene pictured outside the Heritage centre. 

Cove was the number one port for our emigrants, with well over three million departing from here. The vast majority of the Irish who left for the US, departed from Cove. It was also the last port of call for the Titanic. In the picture above, you see the Titanic sailing away from Cove, a final picture for the doomed vessel.

"God himself could not sink this ship"
So claimed the poster above. Talk about pushing your luck.

This artists impression of the sinking of the Lusitania by a German sub, as she slipped beneath the waters, just a few miles off the coast of county Cork. All the above pictures, along with a massive amount of information on emigration and ancestry, are there to see and study in this wonderful centre in Cove. Remember, if you are of Irish descent, your ancestors more than likely left from Cove. To walk in their footsteps right here where they walked, is to really feel the despair of our emigrants. 

Here they are again, my trouble making companions. They were really getting annoyed with this dummy in the centre, as he, of course, would not answer their questions. When i told them that they were talking to a dummy, they thought that i had called them dummies. I suppose i had really.

We did have a great time at Cove, and we all enjoyed our visit there. Later we returned to Kinsale and went directly to James's Fort overlooking the harbour there. Here you can see Don, with Shirley and Pat, sitting on the wall at the fort with the town of Kinsale in the background.

Same location, from a different angle, showing the fort in the background. This was one of two forts guarding the entrance to the harbour of Kinsale. The other one was on the far side of the harbour almost directly opposite.

I knew that he was around somewhere. Instead of Gene, he should be called Genie as he just keeps on disappearing.

Well, the sad day has finally arrived as my pals prepare to leave Kinsale this Sunday morning. Here they are beside our van at the front of the Trident Hotel, all looking well after what i think was a great holiday for all of us. Our final day was to be a trip to the Rock of Cashel in Tipperary before travelling on to Killkenny where we would be saying goodbye. 

Just when i thought we had managed to get to the end of our tour without any further trouble, this funny guy appeared once again. Does anybody recognise him? These ladies definitely know more then they are pretending i think.

Here we have everybody together again with the Rock of Cashel in the background. As you can see , there is a lot of work going on here, and the scaffolding does not do a lot for it at this point in time.

I think that this is a great picture of the guys. I took this myself, and i can assure you that it is not easy to get a good picture of these guys. The Rock of Cashel in the background does help a lot though.

Well we did finally move on to Kilkenny and managed to find their hotel in the town centre. I really do hate goodbyes, and this time it was especially hard. Eventhough the guys were a handful, they were unpredictable, argumentative, fond of the Guinness etc, i found that we had all these things in common and the Irish came out in all of us. I missed them on my way home today. The peace in the car was just too much for me. 
I just hope that, now that they do not have me to look after them, they will not get into any trouble in Kilkenny this evening. 

Gene, Pat, Don and Shirley, thank you all for coming to travel with me, and for being the great fun people that you are. We laughed a bundle, shared great stories, and many memories both happy and sad. It was just the perfect way to make new, real friends, and you are now a part of my collection of special memories.
You were all just great.

Love you all.

Dave