I spent Christmas 2000 in Jeremy’s hometown of Cobh, in Ireland. Cobh is not pronounced “cob-h" but rather “cove", and it is an odd example of an English word being Irish-ized instead of the other way around (I guess they wanted to get as far away from the Englishness of Cobh’s original name - “Queenstown" - as possible). Cobh is a very small town on Ireland’s southern coast. It’s a harbor town on an island, and it has the dubious distinction of being associated with two very famous, very unfortunate ships: the Titanic and the Lusitania. Cobh was the last place the Titanic stopped before sailing off into the icy north Atlantic (despite what James Cameron would have you believe), and it was also the end of the journey for the passengers of the Lusitania, which was sunk very close by. This, coupled with the fact that Cobh was a major port of emigration for Irish people sailing to America during the Famine, makes for a pretty bleak history.

The town itself isn’t bleak at all, however. In fact, even in the 6 or so years since I first visited, Cobh seems have really spruced itself up and is now cashing in not only on the Titanic connection but also on the Irish-American connection through all the American tourists who go to Cobh every year to trace their Irish roots. It’s what you (well, I) might call a “quaint" town: lovely harbor, big 19th century cathedral, lots of brightly painted storefronts, little sailboats, and restaurants and restaurants with names like “The Beacon” or “The Seaview”. It’s also got a pub named “The Titanic” and one named “The Lusitania” (or “The Lucy”), the two of which together are referred to as “the sinking ships” (as in, “We’ll be in one of the sinking ships tonight around 9.”). Maybe it’s macabre, but it’s kind of amusing as well.

A vacation in Cobh is a relaxing vacation indeed. I spent most my Christmas vacation this year on the couch in front a television with a drink in one hand and some item of food (crackers, chips, Christmas cake) in the other. When I wasn’t completely vegetating, I went into town with Jeremy, or walked around the countryside at the back of the island. Time seemed to slow down on this vacation, one day flowed into the next, and aside from the fact that I was downing allergy tablets like M&M’s to combat my body’s reaction to Jeremy’s mom’s dog, everything was just dandy.

And here are a few of the real highlights of My Christmas Vacation in no particular order.

1. The town of Cobh itself: it was Christmas-y! Unlike Brighton, Cobh really decked itself out for the holidays. There were lights strung across all the streets, and there was a tree in the center of town, and there were lights and candles and decorations in the windows of almost every house. There were free cookies and mulled wine being offered to people in supermarkets and banks and shops. There were Christmas carols. There was general merriment and Christmas cheer, and I liked it a lot.

2. The Roaring Donkey. This is a pub in Cobh where there is a traditional music session every Wednesday night. It has cozy stone walls and benches, and there is an enormous fireplace with Celtic knotwork carved into the wood around it. The Murphy’s Irish stout is dark and lovely (no Guinness, please - this is County Cork, after all, and Murphy’s is brewed in Cork). When the session really gets going, the owner of the place will call out, “All hours, lads!” - an indication that the 11:00 p.m. closing time regulation is going to be ignored, the blackout shutters are going to be put up in the front windows and the music will go on merrily in the back room for a good while longer.

The first session of our holiday was right before Christmas. Eight people wound up set dancing in about 6 square feet of space in the back room, and the session culminated in an entire pubful of people (myself included) singing “Fairytale of New York” at the top of their lungs in honor of the very recently departed Kirsty MacColl. Maybe it’s cheesy, but it brought a tear to my eye. No one does sentimentality like the Irish.

3. The food (you knew it was coming, didn’t you?). It was seafood heaven. I subsisted almost entirely on a diet of seafood: smoked salmon, fresh salmon, fresh crab, baked mussels, baked cod, fresh oysters… My seafood regimen was broken only by frequent Irish breakfasts (with black pudding, which is great if you don’t think too hard about where it comes from), by some good meat-and-two-veg meals and by regular Wednesday evening trips to “The Peninsula” for the Most Filling Chinese Food in the World. Oh, and by the chicken enchilada that I ordered for lunch in a restaurant on Christmas Eve - I had to have a taste of home, and baked enchiladas used to be my family’s traditional Christmas Eve dinner (don’t ask why).

In between and after meals, I padded myself out with Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, Christmas cookies, cheese and crackers, homemade ice cream, more smoked salmon and copious amounts of wine, beer and Bailey’s. I was a complete glutton, and my only saving grace was the fact that Jeremy’s mom lives at the top of a very steep hill, so going out anywhere entailed a long walk down that hill and an exhausting hike back up it.

4. New Year’s Eve. Jeremy and I were at the pub with friends until about 11:30, at which point there seemed to be a mass exodus. Everyone, including us, left and went back home. At the stroke of midnight, we stood on the street with Jeremy’s mom and Hamish the Dog and watched the sparkling harbor, where all the ships were shooting off brilliant flares and sounding their horns. Those ships’ horns, which can sometimes sound so mournful, sounded solemnly joyful that night, and I liked thinking about all those sailors and fisherman on their boats in the harbor ringing in the real new millennium. Even though I couldn’t actually see them on their boats and I have no idea who they actually were (Cobh fisherman? Ferry captains? Tanker sailors from the Far East?), I felt like we were all sort of celebrating together, and it made me happy.

5. The people and their stories. No where else on earth will you hear as many tales of comedy and tragedy as you do in Ireland. We weren’t in Ireland more than an about an hour before we heard the first unforgettable tale, that of a “burial at sea” in Cork harbor which went terribly awry: the friends of the man who had requested the burial at sea rowed out into the harbor and ceremoniously threw the coffin into the water. And it didn’t sink. It floated away. See, they hadn’t thought to either weight the coffin with something or put holes into it so that it would sink. They spent the next several hours chasing the floating coffin (which they had already started to refer to as “Moby Dick”) around the harbor in a boat and trying to harpoon it so that it would fill with water and go down. I honestly don’t remember if they succeeded or not because I was laughing so hard at this point that I couldn’t follow the story anymore.

The tragedies can be just as bizarre as the comedies. Jeremy’s uncle told us how he saw a friend of his coming towards him on the street one day, and how he (the uncle) crossed to the other side of the road because he suspected that this friend would ask him to go to the pub for a pint, and Jeremy’s uncle didn’t want to. The uncle got home, sat down and opened up the paper to find that the friend he was sure he had just seen had actually passed away the day before. A case of mistaken identity, or something else entirely? I certainly don’t know, but I have the distinct feeling that, when it comes to things like this, almost anything is possible in Ireland.

6. The Gemuetlichkeit. It’s a cliché, but I simply can’t deny the fact that Ireland is a country that seems to want to make you feel at home. And I seem to have become a sort of honorary Irish person; all of Jeremy’s friends and family and friends of the family welcomed me “home" when I showed up (I guess in light of the sad fact of so much Irish emigration, almost anyone actually coming into the country is going to be welcomed with open arms). I’m racking up more “homes" than I can count. Well, the more, the merrier.

I could go on, but I won’t. Well, okay, one more page.

It’s hard to write about coziness and warmth without sounding twee, and it’s hard for me to write about Ireland without hitting on nearly every cliché in the book. Suffice to say, despite the fact that I (as always) missed my family horribly, I had a good Christmas in the little town of Cobh.

Oh, and here’s my tourist office spiel: if you happen to be in Cork, take a trip down to Cobh on a Wednesday. Have some seafood chowder in the Bistro for lunch, visit the Heritage Center, have afternoon tea at the River Room Café, hike up the hill and look at the cathedral, grab an early dinner at the Peninsula (I recommend the honey and chili chicken), and then head to the Roaring Donkey and settle in for an evening of Murphy’s and music. It’s worth the trip.