Cork City (Ireland) > Reviews > Short break in and around Cork, Ireland

Author's product rating:   

Value for Money	Poor
Sightseeing	Poor
Shopping	Average
Nightlife	Average

Advantages:	Maryborough House Hotel & Spa
Disadvantages:	Not much to do, disc parking schemes

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

We had a 4 night break based around Cork, the good point was the hotel in Douglas (Maryborough Hotel and Spa) which was very good with excellent facilities and very friendly staff (probably because most were eastern european rather than Irish). Not a cheap option though.

Overall though we found Cork disappointing, the countryside is OK, nothing spectacular though, and many areas appear shabby.

One thing we did note was the apparent aversion to tourists in terms of lack of parking spaces - Cork City and most towns - even small ones have "disc parking" i.e. if you are local it's easy to park, if not then virtually impossible or you pay often over 2 euros per hour - and worse many parking bays have a 2 hour maximum stay.

The City itself was also disappointing, it seems to be undergoing a major refurb in the centre at the moment with lots of building work, also the centre is small and after a couple of hours there didnt seem to be much to do (we have kids so pubs were not an option). We tried to go to one of the parks but again no parking available so we gave up!

Prices on the whole seemed a bit higher than UK (particularly for wine, where a £6 bottle was more like £10 in Ireland), and also many of the tourist attractions seemed to charge quite a lot for not much!! The most laugable being the Model railway Village at Clonakilty - over 21 euros for a familty ticket to walk round a few (sad) model houses with a bit of railway track and some toys trains (not many either) running round. It was fun though to see the bemused looks on the other visitors faces, clearly thinking the same as we did - "we paid how much for this???". Fota animal park (near Cobh) was just about worthwhile though, you do get quite close to the animals and the kids enyojed it.

So overall we had an OK stay, were lucky with the weather (no rain), can say we've been there - but probably no on our list of places to re-visit. We were disappointed with the general unfriendliness of the locals (even my 10 year old noticed and commented) - perhaps it helps if you're American rather than English. Our overall impression of Ireland - a bit shabby.