TOPIC:

After many months of inactivity here (mostly because of overwhelming activity at work) Mill Rat is back, and one of our offspring will be (provided all goes according to plan) spending the 2013-2014 school year studying a UCC.

So we'll just west of the city centre sometime around September 8-16 or so, and would like to do a meet-up, informal or not, with local Beoir members. Looks like Franciscan Well is the go-to joint, but your recommendations are far more valuable than my semi wild guesses.

Speaking of wild guesses, we're trying to decide where to stay. So far we've looked at Killarney Guest House and Achill House. Your recommendations (pos & neg) on these and other fairly economical accommodations are welcome.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I can recommend Killarney House as that's where I stayed the last time I was in Cork.

Franciscan Well is a great place to meet up, that's where most are held. There are also some great pubs around the city. Make sure to grab the Beoir app and/or use the directory map.

Porterhouse is on your side of the river and is well worth a visit. Especially for the shuffleboard. You can also catch US sports next door in the Woolshed.

what ever you do don't stay in Shandon Bell (right next to UCC gates) terrible bnb.
but garnish house across the road are very decent.

Garnish house for the win! They do an infinite breakfast. They just keep stuffing food into you until you beg for mercy.

Thanks for the input! We're still waiting for UCC to officially accept our daughter's enrollment, so there's nothing like the last minute, is there? Drive me to drink, at least I'm good company for that.

If the gods of air travel are with us, we will arrive Shannon on Saturday AM. With the overnight flight, I'm not sure we'll still be awake by Saturday PM. (Last time we flew in, we sat down to ponder our options for a few minutes and woke up hours later). What other nights might be better (or worse) for a meet-up?