Belfast Weekend Trip July 22-25
Friday we had a meeting and left for Belfast - yay! It's only about a two hour drive. Everywhere in Ireland is 2-3 hours from each other (driving), it's pretty cool. Something to know about Belfast - it's in Northern Ireland. The north section of Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom - not the rest of Ireland. Imagine if Texas left the U.S. - it went something like I imagine Texas leaving would. Britain also had a hand in it and took over the Northern Ireland area at one point. I'm fuzzy on the exact history, but what you do need to know is that history is in the making. There's one side of Belfast for the Catholics and one side for the Protestants. Depending on who you ask, the Protestants are the majority and the main nicer section.. Well I don't know. We had a few cab drivers on our tour, one said one thing, another said something different, and one was too afraid to get out on the Protestant side of the peace wall. Oh! Yeah there's peace walls. Not quite the gravity of the Berlin wall, these are more aluminum types and probably 30 feet high. The streets intersecting the wall have gates that close each night. One gate on each side of the wall. People will throw things over the wall - the Sunday the week before we were there they were throwing golf balls over, and the houses directly near the wall have cages over their backyard.. Not exactly a great way to live. The week before we arrived they also had their yearly bonfire on the Protestant side, it was so huge it was rumored to hit 80m high flames and a house nearby accidentally caught fire. This is very different from the intentional fires that used to break out. All of this started primarily about 10 years ago. One peace wall of the 5 original ones built was taken down and depending on who you ask, the other ones are supposed to start coming down in the next two to ten years. Not a place I wanted to be out at night alone. No one did.
Anyway, Saturday was our black cab tour around the city! It was mostly about the politics of the above situation. There are memorials for fallen people all over, memorials for massacres, a small museum we visited and a church. It was pretty informative and interesting. Not my type of tour - I prefer nature. They had to offset the latter nature trip with history so everyone enjoys a part of the trip, so it didn't bother me much. I still find it interesting and slightly terrifying as things are still unsettled. Although they do have a huge graffiti peace wall art area and I got to write my name and stuff which was pretty cool. Obama and a few other big names have done so as well, but they get covered easily and regularly, so it's unlikely we would find it if we tried. Also I'm in love with their cabs. They look so old and Classic English!! I got pretty excited when I saw them!
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That was the morning, afterwards we took off to lunch and onto a bus afterward towards the Dark Hedges, the Giant's Causeway, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and back to Belfast. I've posted the photos below from each area. We also made a super quick stop to BushMills Distillery - the oldest licensed whisky distlleryAll were extremely beautiful and quite populated by tourists, so the photos have too many people for my taste. I even took loads of selfies (more than I've ever taken in my life), and a few photos for my parents of me in these beautiful places. It's unfortunate I left my camera in Dublin for this trip, but it was a bit rushed, so maybe it worked out okay.
Dark Hedges
Giant's Causeway
Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge
Bushmills Distillery
On our free Sunday, Amanda and I lounged around and laid in bed, watched TV, and studied a bit. It was a much needed day of down time. I wanted to find some motion sickness medicine, but the pharma was closed - so I stopped by St George's Market. It was pretty amazing - they have 'fishmongers' which are the black market fish sellers. Just kidding - it's all legal. I just can't get over how weird that term is. Anyway, the fishmonger was the first thing I saw when I walked in, and it set me up for amazement. There were healthy sweets shops, ethnic food, cute tote bags, jewelry, crepe and coffee shops, and artists. I even enjoyed some live entertainment! After that we made our way to a
restaurant - 4th Wall. OMG it was great. It was on my list of places to try, and had a 2 or 3
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​course meal option. I got the appetizer and a main, she got a main and a dessert. We split the app and dessert and it was grand!! I would HIGHLY recommend going there any time you're near Belfast. We had the salmon spread on toast for the app, my main was a crispy chicken atop ratatouille and a pesto sauce, and the dessert was a honeycomb sundae. Complete with real honeycomb. Does that not make your mouth water?!
