Step inside St Fin Barre’s Cathedral this week, and you’ll be greeted not just by the soaring Gothic arches and intricate stained-glass, but by a blazing sun right in the heart of Cork. The Helios exhibition, a six-metre-wide glowing sculpture by UK artist Luke Jerram, has transformed the cathedral’s nave into a cosmic spectacle for…

While wandering around a market in Athens, I saw this man sitting on the ground outside his tool-filled shop. He seemed very relaxed and was chatting to a nearby man. I hope that beer was nice and cold as it was quite a warm day! The Areti beer seen in the photo is a Greek…

A little dog looks out of a window of his home on Barrack Street, Cork. He must be very used to passing foot traffic. He never barked once!

The Galeón Andalucía, a replica of a 16th-17th century Spanish galleon docked in Cork a few days ago for the European Maritime Days to Play, on yesterday and today. I wandered down the quays where there were a number of other boats. A nice day out for school kids who got a few hours out…

Two young men decorate the underpass on the Line in Blackrock this evening with spray paint. There are fabulous murals on both walls of the underpass! Fun fact: spray paint, the tool of choice here, was invented in 1949 by Edward Seymour, on the suggestion of his wife, Bonnie.

Joey Neville entertained a small audience in Cork City Library this afternoon with a selection of his own compositions, and other tunes. He was later joined by Eileen Healy on violin.

Off to the side of Monastiraki Square, near the train station entrance is a Flormar store, and I when I saw what you see above I had to get a photo. If you go there now, you might see that man. He was attending to a local stall and stepped away for a moment.

I was lucky he didn’t spot me taking this candid photo.

A hand raised in greeting, with a smiling face, or is it a hand raised in anger? Luckily, it was the former, with the smiling face of a friendly man just out of the shot greeting his friend in the plaid hat.

If you don’t like crowds, you should avoid Valencia during the Fallas festival. I rarely saw any trouble. The crowds were almost always in good mood or, at the very least, resigned to not moving very fast. It appears that moving fast can be accomplished if you hire someone in a high-vis vest who will…

If you visit Valencia during the first 19 days of the month of March you’ll be bombarded by the loud bangs of bangers going off, and fireworks every day. You’ll also come across elaborate Falla, or statues, dotted around the city. In the past, they were built of papier mache, but these days the main…

A glass fronted building on Wilton Terrace is reflected in the waters of the canal in Dublin earlier this month. I thought it might be the Canadian Embassy, but Google Maps shows it’s a slightly different building.