

We stayed two nights at Fernroyd House, this fabulous B&B in Cork. In the morning, the day after we saw Kilkenny, we drove down from Cork to Cobh, a town about half an hour south of the city, and caught a ferry over to Spike Island. The island used to have a fortress, built by the British, that was turned into a prison, then back into a fort, and finally into a prison again, closing fairly recently. The complex of buildings remains pretty intact, except for a few of the barracks/cell blocks that were burned out, one in a riot in the 1980s, and another the night before auditors were coming to look into discrepancies in the financial records.
We started with a walking tour up to the top of the hill and around the grounds. Then Riley and I went into all the buildings, including the punishment block that served as solitary confinement, and finally we strolled down to a village that was abandoned following the prison riot.
The grounds of the fort/prison at Spike Island Inside a cell block at Spike Island Entrance gates at Spike Island They almost didn’t let me leave On our walking tour of Spike Island
Abandoned village, Spike Island

After taking the ferry back to Cobh (which is a big stop for cruise ships, partly due to the presence of a White Star Lines former office and a Titanic experience), we walked through the cathedral. Finally, we drove back to Cork to walk the walls of Elizabeth Fort, a 17th-century fort whose walls are shockingly intact. Riley wanted to walk around Cork, so we headed over to the English Market, which is kind of like a permanent farmer’s market.
View of Cobh from Spike Island Cobh Cathedral close-up Inside Cobh Cathedral View of Cork from the top of Elizabeth Fort A wall of Elizabeth Fort View of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork English Market, Cork