When I visited Cork last fall, I came across this shop in neon blue lights, filled with all kinds of cheap goods – some might say: rubbish – for cheap prices. Those shops are popular across Europe and since they sell literally everything for the same price, they were named after it:

1-Euro-Shops.

Now what would you think those Shops are called in Ireland…? – Exactly: Simply double the price and name.

Luckily, the owner chose not to raise his prices exponentially, as his shop sign might suggest.

Cork is a great place with a lot of shopping opportunities, though incredibly packed that very weekend, due to the festival. So we ended up finding out that most places where you could listen to ‘real’ Jazz were booked out. That’s why we decided to just enter one of the zillion pubs in the city centre and listen to “The Hot Guitars” and their crazy singer Joe, who contacted me shortly after I put this video on YouTube, saying thanks for doing so. Well, thank you – for the great show, Joe!

The next day, we went to the southern coast near Cork, had breakfast in a sleepy town at the seaside which’s name I can’t recall, and then visited the lovely town of Kinsale and the nearby Charles Fort (satellite view), where my colleague Marta’s boyfriend Andor took this nice picture:

All in all, good crack, as my flatmate Paul would say. A trip to his hometown Belfast is coming into reach, by the way.