87th Entry Links Page

Cork Ireland Reunion - September 2016

The 2016 reunion was held at the Metropole Hotel in central Cork, Ireland.
Members started arriving on Monday for the Tuesday reunion dinner (20 September). Most members stayed on until their Friday departure.

Cork, or Corcaigh in Irish means "marsh". The hotel, which was built in 1898, backs onto the river Lee. Its entrance is in MacCurtain Street.

Pre-dinner drinks. The bar was a bit on the small side.

Mike Crawford ensures we go into the correct dinner. We walked through the other group after dinner on the way to the bar. It was very quiet!

Sue Thompson gives her order for dinner while Jim checks his speech notes. The menu looked good.

.

These fellows are looking a bit serious. Time to get out into the bar from our function room. We robbed the minute bar of furniture to set up tables in the very large reception hall. the hotel was reasonably spacious but best use was not made of the space.

.

Thursday we visited the English Market in Princes street. It was not quite the place for a full day out. It was interesting nevertheless, given that the previous day's outing to Kinsale had been a complete rain storm wash-out.

Somebody had previously mentioned the ugly gurnard fish. There was plenty of fresh fish available in Cork which was well provided at the hotel.

Did not see any sword fish on the hotel menu which was a common dish when stationed in Malta. In Gan we had "gizzit" shark and chips. Masirah had the best fish dish: free lobster in the Corporal's Club.

Looks like special bag pipe for buskers. The lad played very well and rescued me when I slipped leaning forward to toss a Euro coin into his instrument case!

Breakfast on Friday departure day. Although the "Irish" breakfast looked somewhat dry, it tasted very good.