my Irish love, Cork: Crawford Art Gallery

Happy Monday! It’s hard to believe it’s already the last day of August. How are you doing? Are you taking time to check-in with yourself and give yourself the care, love, and attention you need? If not, it’s perfectly okay to set aside time for yourself to do whatever you want/need to do during ‘me time.’ Maybe your thing is yoga, meditation, running, reading, tending to a pallet garden you built, sewing some pillowcases for your home decor, making a dress to match your homemade mask, paddle boarding, refurbishing furniture, tooling around with some new tools, or even playing animal crossing with family and friends, but whatever you want to do during your assigned ‘me time,’ make sure you’re doing it and giving yourself a break.

If you didn’t get a chance to read Saturday’s post - “100th post of quarantine!” - you can click here to read my list of ‘100 Small Kindnesses to Help You Pay It Forward!’ It’s been surreal to think about Saturday’s post being my 100th post of quarantine since resuming blogging. It’s even crazier to think that in just a couple days my blog will hit 300 unique blog posts total since I started blogging a couple years ago (before taking time off to pursue and obtain my Masters degree!). Whether you’ve been here all along or are a newcomer, thank you for being here. It’s been a fun journey, and I couldn’t be here without you!

Before Saturday’s post, I blogged about having dinner with a close friend of mine at the best Japanese restaurant in Dublin after returning from my mini Eurotrip with my boyfriend. Now that we’ve returned to Ireland, I figured it’d be nice to return to my favorite city since I didn’t fully finish writing about the things I’ve loved about it. So, yes, we’re going back to Cork. If you haven’t caught up on the blog posts from the initial Cork entries, here they are--

plant a smooch for that gift of gab

my Irish love, Cork

my Irish love, Cork: hot chocolate

my Irish love, Cork: knit life

my Irish love, Cork: English Market

my Irish love, Cork: Blackrock Castle

As I’ve previously mentioned, I spent many a short getaway taking a train from Dublin to Cork. Besides the delicious treats I’d found at O Conaill Chocolate or the English Market or the sites I saw at Blarney Castle or from the Blackrock Observatory, there were some other experiences that made Cork feel so special.

I spent a fair share of my time in art galleries while living in Europe. And visiting Cork was no different. The Crawford Art Gallery is located right in Cork City Centre at the heart of everything. It’s walkable from the English Market (in case you’re craving some olives, bread, and cheese) and just a minute’s walk to the Cork Opera, and it is a national cultural institution dedicated to the visual arts, both historic and contemporary. When I visited the Crawford Art Gallery, it was a mid-week jaunt well outside of tourist season in Ireland. I saw art that jolted me from its grotesqueness, as well as contemporary pieces of furniture that would make any home decorator swoon. It was a small, clean space, welcoming enough to invite you in but sterile enough to remind you to be quiet. As with many other museums and art galleries I visited while abroad, the admission fee was the best part: free.

If you ever get the chance to visit Cork, the Crawford Art Gallery is a must. Even if you don’t spend hours there (like I did), it is definitely worth a trip. You never know what art will strike you (or, perhaps, remind you of the collage that Leslie Knope & co. tried to make on Parks and Rec). And if you’re as lucky as I was to strike up a chat with the docent upstairs in the film room, you’ll be blown away by the amount of history and knowledge shared in one conversation.

Have you ever stumbled upon an art exhibit that blew you away? Between The Crawford Art Gallery and the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, I’ve been incredibly fortunate. Let me know! Subscribe in the e-mail submission box below and reach out, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and reach out to me on the “contact” page. I’m so happy you're here and that I’ve been receiving a lot of really incredible stories, questions, and feedback from a community all over the globe! Other people’s stories that I’ve gotten to read via e-mail, text, tweet, DM, etc. recently bring me such smiles, and I am so grateful for all of it! I hope I get to hear all about whatever stories you’ve been thinking about as we’ve been on this virtual journey together! Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you have any restaurants/eateries/pubs/coffee shops/ice cream joints/theatres/lookout spots you would recommend in other countries or even in your current home town or city, I'm absolutely 100% all ears!! I couldn’t do this without you! So THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, truly, thank you.

Sincerely,

Johny

P.S. - If you want to catch up from the beginning on this series of travel adventures, here's a cheat sheet to the posts (in order in which they were published):

1. Won't you join me?

2. grateful for starbucks and sandymount strand

3. Once Upon a December in the National Gallery

4. plant a smooch for that gift of gab

5. may the 4th be with you: Dingle style

6. cinco de mayo: the best Mexican food in Dublin

7. pizza in roma

8. mussolini’s window and the philosophers’ metro stop

9. father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife

10. it's the vatican, not the vatican't

11. spoiler alert: i did not lose my hand

12. more pizza and gelato and Neptune, oh my