A stay at WatersEdge Hotel, Cobh
I’d assumed we’d stay in Cork for our visit to the south edge of Ireland, but instead I found the WatersEdge Hotel in Cobh. Staying right on the quay sounded and looked great, and with a car park, that sealed the deal.
Cobh is at the gateway to Cork’s port, so if you love watching boats go by, WatersEdge hotel is a perfect place to stay.
The hotel only has 20 rooms, but while it is more old fashioned in some areas, we really liked our room, and found it comfortable.
The parking is underneath the hotel – it’s a little tight to get into, and pillars are involved next to the spaces, but we had no problem getting a space when we checked in. It’s for hotel guests only, so no fighting for spaces with people using the restaurant without staying.
As we’d arrived early, we checked we could leave the car while we got lunch and explored a bit. We had a warm welcome from the lady on the front desk (which is literally a huge desk in the middle of the foyer).
The location is right on the quayside. One direction you can find the Cobh Heritage Centre, the other is a short walk to the town centre. For pretty colourful buildings, the Colman Cathedral, shops, pubs and cafes, plus a lovely park, there’s plenty to wile away an afternoon in the sun.
Our room at Waters Edge Hotel
One thing to note is there’s no lift – rooms are on the first floor. So it’s a couple of flights of stairs with your luggage. Our room was only just off the entrance to the floor but it’s thick carpet and we didn’t hear people wandering past outside the room like we do in other hotels.
The room itself was meant to be a twin standard room, but we were lucky to have a double and single bed rather than 2 singles. Nice for me, not so nice for N (again). It felt like quite a large room too with lots of space at the end for table and chairs, and for us to spend lots of time looking out at the view.
Perfect to be looking over the water to watch everything going by, and great to have a fully opening window to let any breeze in.
One bonus was 2 suitcase racks (whoop) rather than just the one. The second was a tower fan, which we only used initially to cool us down after lugging our suitcases up the path to the hotel and in up the stairs!
The usual tea tray (no biscuits or hot chocolate unfortunately, but we had some of the latter we’d taken from the first hotel of our trip), hair dryer, and iron in the wardrobe. Plenty of lamps (although no main light again – not sure why this seems to now be a thing). Although the plug sockets were harder to find, and the ones by the bed for charging phones/having a clock on waking were hidden behind headboards, or bedside tables. N couldn’t fit his plug into the one behind his bed, and he was the one who needed a clock more than myself with my watch.
We spent a lot of time just watching the water. We were above the restaurant, but it wasn’t too noisy in the afternoon, and in the evening they stop serving food at 8pm. So there was no noise into the evening.
The boats seemed to stop coming and going by 9 so you didn’t hear them going all night. Because we couldn’t see the ground below, it did look and feel like you were actually on the water yourself. If you get seasick easily, that may be a bit of an issue. The downside was a cruise liner arriving at 6 into dock at just along from our window so that was noisy. Interesting to watch, but if you’re a light sleeper, you will wake to them appearing.
Dinner at Jacobs Ladder Restaurant
On our foray into the town centre, we didn’t really see many restaurant options. So we decided to eat in the hotel restaurant called Jacobs Ladder. As with most restaurants by the sea, there was a plethora of fish dishes. But they also had non fish options for people like me!
We did book a reservation just in case it got busy. Most tables were taken by the time we left, and there were quite a few people having drinks outside too. We were all amused by the little pied wagtail that kept coming in and out of the open doors next to me.
N chose the haddock and chips, and said it was very tasty. The fish was a reasonable size, and he managed to eat it all. Definitely a realistic size portion rather than the ridiculously huge fish served in many chippies.
I’d seen ravioli and chicken burger were dishes on their menu online, but these weren’t on the menu in the restaurant unfortunately. I decided against the beefburger (I didn’t really want more chips), and instead chose the red thai chicken curry. It was a really nice meal with just the right amount of rice and curry. Nice to eat somewhere where the portion sizes work well for us.
The soft drink options were limited – I’m not a full fat coke fan, so Coke Zero would not be my choice of a zero sugar drink, but no diet coke was available. So I tried the Irish apple fizzy drink Cidona. I’d expected something like Appletiser, but it was more cider like, and we really liked it.
Breakfast at Watersedge Hotel Cobh
We were the first down to breakfast during our stay, so it was good to know we had all the fresh food out. There was plenty of choice – N said the bacon was the best of the hotels on our visit. I stuck with cereal, pastries, but couldn’t resist having scrambled egg on toast after seeing his eggs. It was so buttery, it was really tasty.
It also wasn’t bad getting to eat breakfast overlooking the view of the water. With the entertainment of the cruise liner docking right by the window.
We really liked the room and our stay at Watersedge. If you don’t want to be right in Cork, then Cobh could be a quieter place to visit. I’d quite liked to have had another half a day there, and to spend some time in Cork itself, but maybe another time.
Check out some of our other Irish roadtrip stops: