Busy, busy, busy!

So, since the last time I wrote, I have been to Cork City, saw Christy Moore in concert, and watched my first hurling match. Needless to say, it's been a busy weekend! So I'll start at the beginning!
Cork City
On Saturday a group of us decided to catch the bus from here in Dungarvan out to Cork to spend the day before we had to be back for the Christy Moore Concert. Cork was great, they had just started their St. Patrick's Festival, which lasts a week, so there was a lot to do on Grand Parade and St. Patrick's Street. There were tons of vendors out most of them selling food of some kind. The booths were specialties and they had everything from homemade crepes to oven baked pizza's. It all smelled amazing and was very delicious! They also had a stage up at the end of Grand Parade Street and we stood and listed as a few different bands took their turn on the stage. While those bands took the stage, buskers and smaller groups scattered themselves around the city playing for the change thrown into their open buckets, or instrument cases. Needless to say, almost anywhere you went you were surrounded by music - as you moved out of earshot of one busker you would soon hear the notes of the next artist as you walked down the streets. After spending some time at the festival we ventured out a bit from the crowds to see more of Cork. We went looking for the North Cathedral, but instead found St. Fin Barre's, an amazing old Church on the SOUTHERN side of Cork. Oops, we realized we went the wrong way. But St. Fin Barre's was a great find! We asked a someone for directions to North Church, they didn't know where it was, but told us a great story about the golden angel perched on the top of the dome at the back of St. Fin Barre's. They said that according to legend, that when the Apocalypse happens, the angel will come to life and sound the trumpets it is holding to announce the coming of the Kingdom. After some wandering about there, we headed back into the festival. At this point the group split up, Caitlin and I ventured out to find the clock tower that we kept seeing and the rest of the group stayed to explore the festival more. We found the clock tower to be none other than the famous Shandon tower, attached to St. Anne's Church. You can walk all the way to the top of the tower and have a birds eye view of Cork. On your way up you can also ring the Church bells, so that was a good "craic". We played "Oh, Susanna", "The Bells of St. Mary's" and "The Last Rose of Summer". After making lots of noise and seeing Cork from way up high, we headed back to Dungarvan.

Christy Moore
The Christy Moore concert was held in a town center in Capoquin, a nearby town. He is truly a great musician and it was a real treat to be able to hear such a legend play. The venue was very intimate which made the concert really enjoyable. He even played a song for us! It was a very sad song, but it was still really good. Most everyone there knew all the words to the songs and sang along, everyone was really enjoying themselves clapping and singing.

Hurling
Hurling.... words to describe Hurling...fast, brutal, fun, crazy, skillful. Get the picture? Not really... I have a hard time describing Hurling, I think the best I can do is say that it is a cross between, hockey, soccer, lacrosse and instead of me trying to explain it to you, I think a video would do it justice best. The game was a blast, the crowd really gets into in and we started to as well! Hopefully I'll be able to go see another match before we leave. The match we saw was between Waterford, blue and white jersey's and Limerick, the green jereseys. We of course rooted for our home team of Waterford. They won handily out scoring Limerick 26 to 16!
Anyways, here is a little video I took at the game, I hope this helps better than my description.


So that's all I have for now! But this week is looking to be a good one, we have more trips and St. Paddy's day events all coming up