Ireland is fun, we’ve been before – but this time we took friends to the ship and spent a couple of weeks in Dublin, Cobh, and the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago of small islands off the Southwest corner of England.

We were fortunate enough to meet up with Herbie and Di, our dear friends from New Zealand who happened to be in Dublin.  I forced them to join me on a golf outing despite 48 degree weather and 30 mph wind.  Gave up after 7 holes and 7 lost balls when the rain started.

Did the compulsory Dublin pub crawl and Jameson Whisky tours before heading to Cobh (County Cork).  Cobh (pronounced “Cove”) is most noted for being the last port from which the Titanic sailed.  There’s a fun little museum with role playing that will convince you that it was not a “luxury” liner for very many!

We were pleased to find we hit the otherwise sleepy town during a blues festival that had some great music in the bars. 

 I put together a small sampling (plus a touch of the windy golf) in this 3 minute video:

Then we sailed to a couple of the Isles of Scilly in Cornwall.  And here we got lucky with music too.  Seems every year they have a race weekend for “Pilot Gigs” – 6 oared lifeboats from the early 1800’s.  After the races are over, comes the drinking and singing.  Large groups of mostly men singing beautiful folk harmony.  It was a nice surprise.