Reasons I Love Cork

Today's post will be a bit of a different one and very much out of comfort zone in comparison to the usual fashion and beauty posts. Working where I do means I meet a lot of tourists and people visiting Ireland and I always tell them how amazing Cork is and all the things there are to do. So today I'm going to tell you all the reasons I love Cork.

I am focusing on Cork City because I have grown up and gone to school in the suburbs, live fairly close to town, and go college there.

The first thing I love is that everyone knows everyone, now this can be bad at times but look at the pros, if you lose your friends on a night out you're bound to find someone to talk to. If you meet someone new and want to know more about them find a mutual friend on Facebook to ask about them. Sometimes it's nice to meet people through friends and other connections instead of going and meeting completely new people. As I said everyone knowing you is bad in some ways but I love it most of the time. 

We have the city and country right on our doorstep, sure drive 20 minutes out of town and you can see rolling hills. I think it's a good mix to be able to enjoy the country and city within quite a short distance between the two, it's a good mix of both. That means we can visit the amazing beaches and enjoy the university city without traveling for hours. 

Cork is called the culture capital so surely that means something. Everyone goes to Dublin when they're visiting Ireland so it's quite hard to meet and talk to the locals but in Cork we're pretty much all Corkonians so the tourists can get to know Cork and its culture easily. We have incredible music down here and some amazing dancers so that is definitely something to celebrate. How can you forget about the Guiness Jazz Festival?! Tourists keep coming here so there obviously must be something. 

The shopping and food here is definitely getting better, especially with The Capitol being built. Of course Dublin is the big place for shopping but between town and Mahon Point there is some fab shopping to be done down in Cork. The amount of amazing food places in Cork is incredible and once again the food scene here is definitely growing (although I do think we have enough doughnut places to feed the whole nation). 

Even living in Cork for all my life I still find myself finding hidden gems and exploring. There is constantly something happening and somewhere new to go, even though we will all continue to go to Havanas on a Thursday night! The other week I went exploring the city with my friends and we found so many new places to go and visit, especially with people like Reimagine Cork and Mad About Cork creating some breathtaking art and fab spaces for us to enjoy and discover. 

There is so much promise in our future here in Cork, especially in the field I want to work in which is so fortunate. We are apparently the location of scientific investment which as you can understand makes our future look very bright.

Talking about a bright futures we have some incredible up and coming people, along with the already famous Graham Norton, Ronan O'Gara, Sonia O' Sullivan, Henry Ford and of course my favourites: Tar Marz, Lisa Jordan, Lauren Arthurs, Tiffany Depuis and of course Sinéad Cady, proving Cork people can do incredible things. 

Cork is fairly amazing and even though sometimes you want to get out of the place we really have everything we need here. If this doesn't make you incredibly proud to be from the best county in Ireland then I don't know what does! 

Ailbhe x