I was trying to book a flight from Cork to Rome yesterday as I plan on taking my Mother to the Vatican for her birthday. I was booking a flight in April for 3 people from Cork and it would cost €1,700. The same flight from Dublin only cost €180!
What a huge difference! Why is this? I mean Cork and Dublin are not that far apart, the fuel costs must be the same. The only reason I can think of is because Cork has higher charges than Dublin. Probably because of the debt (€100,000,000) they have been left in by the Government who promised to leave them debt free after they broke away from Aer Rianta.
If I am correct then I feel that is a pretty insane state of affairs. I would love to support Cork airport (as I live in Cork) but it is cheaper for me to travel by train to Dublin, stay the night and then fly out from Dublin airport the next day. Are the government trying to totally kill tourism in Cork? It probably has an effect on business deciding to hold conferences, and maybe even start businesses, in Cork as well.
Areas of Cork (North and West especially) have been marked as severely disadvantaged areas by the EU. People are leaving in their droves and multinationals (such as Molex in Millstreet) are closing down. Surely everything possible that can be done to keep Cork a viable place to do business should be looked at?
Dublin should be able to absorb the debt without much fuss as it is the capital (although not the real one ;) ) and people will always be travelling there for tourism and business. So raising the prices there slightly would have no huge effect on them.
I seem to remember that the Greens signed some contract stating that if they got into power they would wipe the debt. So where is the movement on it?
I have uploaded my pictures from Thailand to the Gallery. Just got back this morning so I am wrecked tired. Will write an entry about the holiday tomorrow or Sunday when I am a bit more awake.
Hey all, no updates for a while because I am travelling in Thailand at the moment. Getting ready to go Scuba Diving now. Will have loads of photos for the Gallery when I get back.
Just got back from my holidays. Went from Cork to Dublin to Belfast to Derry to Galway. Good fun. Went to see Tara, Newgrange, Carrick a Rede rope bridge (where Lorri lost her shoe over the side!) and the Giants Causeway.
Everytime I went on holidays to different countries I met someone who had been to Ireland and they always asked me have I see the Giants Causeway, Newgrange or whatever. So I said the next time I had a week off I’d drive around the country.
Took some photos which can be viewed here.
Was well worth it, Newgrange and the Giants Causeway were fantastic and Derry is a great City! Second best City in Ireland in my opinion (after Cork of course). They really need to advertise more in the South. The walls are fantastic and the people are really friendly. More friendly than any of the other places we’ve been to in Ireland and that is some achievement. Probably because tourism is such a new thing as the area is only after quietening down recently. I would recommend it to anyone and I am going to go back the first chance I get.
If you do go the first thing you should do is take the walking tour. There is very little walking and it only lasts an hour. It really gives you a good idea where everything is and really sets you up for the visit. We had a tour guide called John who was a good guy and was more than happy to give us info on everything.
After that your next stop should be the Museum. One of the bests Museums I’ve visited. When we went in an employee called Jerry offered to show us around and we spent 3 hours in there talking and getting the history of the place (especially recent history) from him. Fantastic. Really got a feel for the place. And again he did it because he saw us showing a genuine interest in the displays. Really brought the history of the place together for us and I think I know more about the history of Derry now than my own city. Great view of the city from the top of it as well.
I would really recommend anyone to go to Derry. Its only around 40km from the border and the bars are full of lively friendly people. The City walls are great, they have a few good large shopping centres and the restaurants are nice.
One of the highlights for me was being able to see a British Army base being demolished when I was there. This base had something like 150 cameras pointing at the residents on the Bogside until recently.
Called into Galway on the way back to see Sean and DJ. Didn’t take many pictures though but some of the ones we have are funny. Especially the “fishing” one.
I’m on holidays! I’m going to go up one side of the country and down the other. Should be good craic if Lorri doesn’t kill me before we get home.
I’ll upload some of the photos when I get back
Went away to Clonakilty for the weekend for Lorris Birthday with Lorri, Conor, Rob and Elaine. Nice place. Went playing hurling and rugby on the beautiful beach there. None of us will be the next Brian O’Driscoll anyway. We were getting the hang of passing it backwards by the time we were finishing up!
Took some photos in the pubs we went to. I’m sure some of the guys never want to see apple sours or poitÃn again!
Finally got around to updating the Gallery. It’s a bit difficult since I still don’t have broadband at home. Anyway I’ve updated the site with pics (and a movie) from Paddys Day, a few pics from the Old Head of Kinsale and Blarney Castle with Samir and Lorri and some from a pool in Cobh where myself and Owen started learning how to scuba dive.
Finally uploaded the Amsterdam Pics. Beautiful City. Highly recommended. View the Pics in the Gallery
Decided to put some Google Ads on the page so if anybody sees anything they like please feel free to click away.
Also I am going to redesign the Gallery as it doesn’t quite fit in with the look n’ feel of the rest of the site just yet. That’s a manual process though because I couldn’t find a Gallery generator I liked so be patient.
In the meantime have a look at what the Gallery looks like right now using the links below.
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