'Cork didn't get any less beautiful. I just stopped looking': Being a tourist in your own city

Familiarity has a way of flattening wonder. This prompted Esther McCarthy to become a tourist in her own backyard

Esther McCarthy and Scott Read smile for the camera beside the elevated tree walk in Marina Park. Picture: Chani Anderson

There’s a particular type of blindness that comes with living somewhere beautiful for long enough. I have spent my whole life boring anyone who’ll listen about how lucky we are in Cork — the food, the people, the culture, the festivals, the light on the water, the sheer cheek of a coastal county that has a perfectly-sized city, magic mountains, and the Wild Atlantic Way all within an hour of each other — and yet I could count on one hand the number of times I’d actually gone looking for any of it on purpose.

So this July, in the middle of a heatwave that made the whole county look like it had been lit for an ad, I decided to be a tourist in my own backyard. Cycle the city like I’d never seen it. Eat my way through the English Market like a visitor with one day and a hollow stomach. Bond with alpacas along a sea cliff. Sleep under some of the darkest skies in Ireland. And all an hour from my own front door.