About Cork
Corkonians will tell you Cork is the real capital of Ireland. They mean it half-jokingly, but only half. The English Market has been trading since 1788, the food is the best in the country and the accent is its own world. The city sits on an island in the river Lee, with two main bridges, a beautiful Edwardian opera house and the Shandon bells you can pay a few euro to ring yourself.
Outside the city, Cork county runs from the harbour towns of Cobh and Kinsale, through the West Cork Gaeltacht, all the way to Mizen Head, the southernmost point of the island. Kinsale is fifteen minutes from the airport and worth half a day in itself. Cobh, the last port of call for the Titanic, is on the train line and takes twenty five minutes from Kent Station.
Cork Airport is a fifteen minute taxi from the city. Bus Eireann runs hourly to Dublin, three hours each way.
Stories & guides
Reading from Cork and beyond
Fota Wildlife Park: the open-range zoo where giraffes have right of way
If you've never stood two metres from a giraffe with nothing between you and had it regard you with the mild authority of something that knows it's…
The Beara Peninsula, West Cork: a road trip worth the full day
The drive from Cork city heads west on the N71, through Bandon and Dunmanway, past stretches of low farmland that give you no indication of what's…
Midleton and the Old Midleton Distillery: the whiskey half-day from Cork
There's a town about 25 minutes east of Cork that most visitors from outside Ireland have never heard of, and most visitors staying in Cork drive…
Spike Island: the fort, the prison, and how to visit
The ferry from Kennedy Pier gives you about twelve minutes to look at the thing before you have to get off it, and that's about right. Spike Island…
The English Market in Cork: what to see, eat, and buy
The English Market in Cork is the kind of place that stops you mid-step and makes you look up at the ceiling, at the ornate cast-iron galleries and…
Blarney Castle: the honest guide
Blarney Castle sits eight kilometres north of Cork city and draws somewhere around half a million visitors a year. The stone gets nearly all the…