Originally Posted by
DJ Bitterbarn
I used to have a running joke with a friend of mine (both of us are Canadian) but he lived in Japan and I lived in Cork. The Japanese, he said, were very proud of their four distinct seasons. Canada? We got four DISTINCT seasons. Ireland gets four seasons at the same time. I have on many occasions been rained on in the sun, and an umbrella is useless because of the wind. To close the loop, though, I bought a Japanese umbrella and found it to be the only one that survived for more than a few weeks. Still have it, actually. Used it yesterday.
But you will be rained on and the drive will always take longer than you think. Speed limit signs off the motorways are basically for show, but the drive will be fun, especially down in the southwest.
Also: for parking in Cork city centre (or many/most other towns, actually), it can be difficult at best. Parking Discs (not actually a disc but a scratch card) are available at most convenience stores, one card is valid for varying periods of time depending on the street. If you can find a Tesco or Supervalu or something then you might be able to scam a few hours parking, otherwise there should be good parking structures/lots around. GPS will be key, though, as places like Cork City Centre are just a maze of one-ways.
All really good advice, but especially the last bit about parking. As someone who was once just as unfamiliar with the roads and parking in Ireland and the UK as the OP, it's a good idea to keep two things in mind. First, the cities and towns were there long before the invention of the automobile, and in most cases, unlike the US, there has not been wholesale widening of the roads to accomodate vehicular traffic. As a result, streets are narrow and parking tends to be extremely difficult to find. If you find a parking space that you can stay in for an extended period of time, I'd seriously consider walking everywhere you need to from there rather than driving someplace and looking anew for an elusive parking space.
Street signs, where used, tend to be on the sides of buildings at what we Americans would call the second floor level (and which I now understand would be called the first floor--the floor at ground level is frequently referred to as the ground floor with the first floor up becoming the first, the second, etc.--it actually all makes sense except to Americans raised using a totally different orientation). In addition, street names can change maddenly quickly (four or five times in a number of blocks), which reflects the extended time over which development occurred.
Walking makes it a lot easier to keep track of those changes. I've found myself walking 8-10 miles per day on average on most of my trips so it's not a bad idea to prepare yourself for that before you leave so you won't feel tired simply from the walking you'll probably do.
Second, also unlike in the US, you're better off assuming that paying for parking is required. This issue probably isn't as difficult to comprehend now as it might have been 15 years ago when parking meters were much more the norm in most cities in the US. When I first went to Ireland and didn't see an obvious meter sitting right at a parking space, I assumed there was no need to pay. Upon my return to my car, the parking ticket I'd received taught me another lesson.
The US has actually started catching up with this practice with more central parking devices on a street rather than multiple meters, and the parking disc system is the one most frequently used in Ireland, so this might not be as big an issue for the OP as it was when I started doing foreign travel. Nevertheless, be aware, look around, especially up and down the block to see if there is a sign that indicates the need to pay for parking, and understand that payment may be required, even on a Sunday. I avoided a ticket in Sligo on a Sunday during my June trip this year that I would have probably gotten 10 years ago simply because I didn't make unwarranted assumptions.