Honeymoon in Baltimore (Baltimore, County Cork, Ireland - September 2000)

Unfortunately, I must rely on memory alone as the first tale I must tell from our first major trip together is from our honeymoon in Ireland before I started keeping the journal.

We were living in Charlottesville, Virginia at the time but our wedding was in Baltimore, Maryland (where we now both live and work) in the chapel of our alma mater, Loyola College (now Loyola University in Maryland).  We had picked Ireland as a honeymoon destination and decided no trip to Ireland for these two Baltimoreans could be complete without a trip to our city's namesake - Baltimore in County Cork (to this day, I am not sure why George Calvert took the name Lord Baltimore when he was elevated to the peerage, but it does not seem in any way related to the town of Baltimore as Calvert's Baltimore Manor was in County Longsford).  Baltimore is an anglicized contraction of the Gaelic Baile an Thi Mhoir (which apparently means town with the big house) and the Irish still pronounce it that way, with three distinct syllables, so that it sounds like Baal-Tee-Moor.

This was my first trip overseas, having only been out of the country to Canada previously.  Neither of us wanted to try driving on the opposite side of the road, so we planned our itinerary to rely on trains and buses.  We flew to Dublin on the 17th of September and arrived early in the morning on the 18th.  After a few days in Dublin we took the train to Waterford, stopping first for an afternoon in Kilkenny.  After two days in Waterford, we took a bus to Cork where he planned to base ourselves for the remainder of the trip.  In addition to exploring Cork City, Cork was a convenient location for bus day trips to Blarney Castle, the Ring of Kerry, and, yes, to Baltimore.

The bus station in Cork was near our hotel and I had figured out from the reading the literature I had picked up at the bus station that you could take the bus from Cork to Skibbereen and then transfer from there to a bus to Baltimore.  The bus back to Skibbereen got their in time to transfer to a bus back to Cork, so we could go visit for the day without needing to book any other lodging than our hotel in Cork.

So, our day started with a bus ride to Skibbereen, a tiny town in west Cork.  Not much to do or see there, but there was, of course, a Public House (pub), which actually doubled as the towns bus station.  After being dropped off, we waited for the bus to Baltimore.  And we waited, and waited, and waited, but no bus ever came.  After the bus became quite overdue, we went in to the bus station/pub to inquire about the bus to Baltimore only to learn that the connecting route to Baltimore was seasonal, for the summer only, and stopped running the previous weekend!  The day seemed ruined as our bus back to Cork wasn't until 6 PM and there really was nothing to do or see in Skibbereen (although, in retrospect, perhaps an afternoon of pints with locals might have been fun).  The barman volunteered that he could get us a taxi to Baltimore and, not knowing what else to do, we readily agreed.

Taxi's in Ireland are all hacks, private individuals using their own cars, rather than organized companies of drivers.  If you have never taken a cab ride in Ireland, I would highly recommend doing so as it is generally a delightful experience (it was the cab driver that took us to the Waterford Crystal factory a few days earlier that clued us in to the delightful historical walking tour of Waterford we took).  Our driver to Baltimore was a nice young lad named Damien, who seemed to be in his late teens or early twenties.  He did want to know why two American tourists wanted to see Baltimore County Cork and we told him we were from Baltimore, Maryland and he found that amusing.  He agreed to pick us up at 5 PM so that we could catch the bus from Skibbereen back to Cork City.

Baltimore County Cork is a small fishing village that made Skibbereen look like a metropolis.  Arriving around lunch time, we stopped in a small restaurant where I had a crab salad sandwich (in the passage of time, I have forgotten what Lisa had) - hey, when in Baltimore, eat crab, right?  After lunch we walked down to the harbour, where a small gift shop had a postcard of Baltimore, Maryland on display with the postcards of Baltimore, County Cork!  There is a ferry you can take from Baltimore to Sherkin Island.  We did ride the boat out and back, but with our time constraint, we really couldn't explore the island and basically just paid a few Irish pounds (this was before the euro) for the boat ride.

Upon our return from Sherkin Island, we decided to have a pint in Bushe's pub while waiting for Damien to return to pick us up.  Bushe's is the epicenter of Baltimore social life (in fact, sitting at the outdoor tables at Bushe's and having a pint is such a thing that there is a Facebook group devoted to it).  It was drizzly when we returned (it was Ireland, after all) and we sat inside.  Sitting inside Bushe's we realized that we were not the first Maryland Baltimoreans who had made this pilgrimage as some of the decor inside included Orioles' hats hanging from the walls and rafters that previous patrons had left.

As we were finishing our pints, the rain stopped, the sun came out, and Bushe's started to fill up.  Not only did the pub get busy, but people started congregating outside in the square in front of Bushe's and a band started playing traditional Irish music.  Soon, it seemed, the whole town had gathered in the square and indeed it had, for of all days we arrived in Baltimore County Cork on the day the town was officially dedicating the new Millenium sundial in the square (pictured below just on the right at the top of the stairs, Bushe's is the white building on the left)!

After the grand celebration, Damien picked us up and we made our way back to Cork City after a fun and interesting excursion to that other Baltimore...