Hotel Living in Cork

No one likes living out of a suitcase. While not ideal, hotel living in Cork really isn’t too bad. If you don’t have accommodation sorted out by the time you touch down on terra firma, we highly recommend staying in a hotel for the first few days. Especially if you start work shortly after arriving.

Why a hotel and not a cheaper Airbnb or a mom-and-pop guesthouse you may ask? You are going to be run ragged after the whole move and the long flight, and the hotel has everything you need ready for you. Meals and drinks are on-site, Wi-Fi is free and most hotels have a business centre for printing or will offer a concierge service. Many also have gyms, spas and swimming pools to blow off some steam. You can also have your laundry done if you so choose.

If you find paying a premium at a hotel excessive to have those flight-tired jeans washed, we can offer some advice. Pop your dirty clothes in a hotel laundry bag or suitcase and head over to a freestanding Revolution Laundromat. These are operational even on Christmas day, unlike many of the bricks-and-mortar laundromats in Cork. These are coin-operated washers and dryers that you can find everywhere in Ireland! You can find one online or on google maps. You can park in front them, set it all in motion and wait in your car or the local coffee shop. To be honest I was completely freaked out by this the first time. I mean, I can’t control the amount of detergent, what if the industrial size machine ruins some of our clothes? What if I turn my back and someone steals my stuff? We didn’t want to pay €7 for jeans to be washed at the hotel, but we also didn’t have a lot of clothes to go missing either. Well, you don’t have to worry, there’s no clothing robbery, it’s all good. It’s a temporary solution as weird as it feels, it works really well without damaging your clothes in either the washer or dryer. Everybody waiting for their laundry is kind and courteous and we’ve had a couple of friendly conversations while waiting. We made the laundry trips more pleasant by downloading some Netflix shows to a phone on the free hotel Wi-Fi before we left, and happily sat and watched it in the car for the 45mins or so that we waited. Easy-peasy.

I digress, back to the hotel living situation- a central location will help get you oriented in your new city and public transport will be a cinch. But most importantly, it gives you a bit of breathing space and a moment to focus your thoughts in order to get your new living arrangements sorted out. As a side note, start contacting estate agents as soon as possible. Finding accommodation takes time and patience. We’ll share our experience in a future post.

We booked a two week stay in the Radisson in Cork. Now, you do not have to be all spendy about your hotel choices but, more often than not, the bigger hotel brands do offer excellent value for money on long-stay bookings. Think Radisson, Hilton and InterContinental. Also – you really rack up some rewards points this way! That said, some of the local Irish hotel chains also offer good value on long-stays, like the global players. Make sure to also check out Maldron Hotels, Clayton Hotels, Great National Hotels and Jury’s Inns. If your feeling fancy, try your luck at one of the Original Irish Hotels. They all have properties in most big Irish cities. If possible, try and find a hotel as close to your workplace as possible. If that seems like a bit of a stretch, look for public transport links between your home-away-from-home and the office. Try and keep you commute to work as short as possible especially if you are coming over with a family. This will give you more flexibility to meet up with them to view houses or apartments. You’ll have enough stress and you don’t want to spend unnecessary time on a commute unless you have no alternative.

Public transport infrastructure is much better in Dublin than the rest of the country. The larger cities have some options and networks but, in our case, we did not have many public transport links around our hotel in Cork. We therefore opted to hire a car from Europcar at Cork airport for the first four weeks. This was one of the smartest decisions we made because that meant that we could explore our new surroundings and go anywhere we wanted to look for potential areas to live. Getting to know your new city is important and we were able to cover a lot of ground after hours and weekends. You can read about which suburbs are nice and which ones to avoid, but if you do not have a look for yourself you will never really get a feel for the place. Preferences differ and what we might find excessive the next person might find wanting.

If you have your accommodation booked and your transport sorted for the first few weeks in Ireland there is a lot of stress off your shoulders. We had a couple of discussions where we were grateful to our past selves for having done this.

Hotel living in Cork turned out to be an unexpected saving grace.

-irene