Our week learning about Ireland is over (on to tornadoes tomorrow), but I still have more pictures from our trip to share. Today’s pictures are from our two days in Cork (I already posted some pictures of our visit to Cork – Blarney Castle).

We headed to Cork on April 2nd. The first place we wanted to go was Fota Wildlife Park.

The park has minimal fencing and animals that would normally be together in the wild live alongside each other in gigantic areas. Some animals are free to roam around wherever they want including around the visitors.

This penguin saw me lift my camera, stopped, posed, waited for me to lower my camera, and went waddling off on his way.

We spent a long time watching the family of gibbons play.

The giraffes were absolutely majestic.

I love capybaras. I may have shrieked in excitement when I saw these two.

Before heading to our hotel for the night, we visited nearby Cobh (pronounced “cove”), the last stopping point of the Titanic before it sailed toward America (it was called Queenstown for about 7 decades, including when the Titanic sailed). The town rises rather steeply from the (with insane – even for Ireland – roads).

Up on the hill is St. Colman’s Cathedral. It is beautiful and has little (well, big) saint statues all around the edges of the roof.

The morning of April 3rd, Adrian and I went to the Cork City Gaol. No one else was interested, having seen Kilmainham Gaol just a few days before (plus, there were wax figures in this one and wax museums freak Ani and Cameron out).

A young girl was jailed there for a time and gave birth to her baby boy while incarcerated. Shortly after she and the baby were returned to her cell.

Some surprisingly young boys were jailed in Cork City Gaol, usually for petty thefts.

When we entered, they didn’t charge me admission for Adrian and gave him a lollipop to keep him busy while we went around the place. Little did they know Adrian loves museums and wanted me to read every word on the self-tour guide to him. He didn’t touch the lollipop until we were back in the car.

The main middle section looked very much like Kilmainham. This set up allowed the jailers to see the doors to every inmate’s cell at the same time from one place.

Adrian wore his lemur ears he bought the day before at the zoo. No one, worker or visitor, made a single comment about them the whole time we were touring the jail.

After we left the jail (and before we went to Blarney Castle), we went to the English Market.

We bought lots of yummy foods from various stalls and then sat out in front and had the most expensive picnic of our lives.

A random guy was sitting on the sidewalk playing his electric guitar while we ate. The kids had fun throwing a few Euro coins in his basket.