While students, stroller-pushing moms, and techies flooded Costa Coffee in the main shopping district of Cork, we wandered a few blocks over to the Bookshelf Coffee House (78 South Mall) and found paradise. This little gem has it all: creamy lattes, delicious pastries (some gluten-free), an eclectic, intelligent, and friendly buzz about the place. Surrounding patrons with books and an old library cue card indexing system is a nice touch.
Coffee houses were extremely fashionable in the UK in the 1770s and because of this, Cork merchants brought coffee into the city and established cafes. People flocked to these cafes until the trend faded in the 1880s.
Ironically, the Bookshelf building comes from this time period but was the old Cork City Library (1799) and not a cafe. The Coffee House opened on St. Patrick’s Day in 2012 as an addition to the fast-growing “hospitality” section of Cork.
There is one last thing I’d like to point out about this place: I’m pretty adept at languages, but for the first time ever, I stood perplexed outside the bathrooms trying to figure out whether Fir or Mná meant ladies. Mná *feels* more feminine to me, but I honestly don’t know the answer to this question because both bathrooms looked the same inside.
So, Irish peeps… can you tell me which is which?
BTW, if you ask for a washroom or restroom in Ireland you get a blank stare. There it’s called the “toilet” would you believe. Did they have WiFi?
Yes they did. Decent wireless too. And you didn’t have to ask for a password or scratch a ticket for a one hour access code like at Costa.
I should mention that La Niña has started carrying a camera around on our adventures. Some of her photos may appear periodically. In this case, she took one of the rarer photos of me. I don’t have many because I’m generally behind the camera.
Plus, I also feel that the quality of a people photo is directly related to the chemistry between the person taking that photo and the subject. So, I find her photos of me kinda interesting.
I think I would enjoy this place. For some reason, I think it’s hilarious that the coffee house trend ended in the 1880’s. Perhaps the current trend has an end date, too. Last of all, I have no clue which word means ladies. I was once at a toilet, looking at a picture on the sign that bore a great resemblance to Barry Gibb and had to go and look at the other sign to figure out if it was a manly looking woman or a feminine looking man. It was the ladies’.
That’s really funny! Even in Canada I’ve had to pause to dust off the vocabulary and remind myself that a filly is a female horse and a colt is male. In the case where there’s two single bathrooms, I actually don’t think it matters.
Great find! Looks like my kind of place. I hope you got the washroom mystery solved!