Whoo! I had intended to post the second part of our trip to Ireland right after I wrote about Dublin but then I got just a wee bit distracted by fun and outings with the Hubby. But I'm back now! Ready for more Irish adventures? Here we go!
After a few days in Dublin we took the train to Belfast. It's a beautiful and easy train ride of only two hours between the two cities. But, when you arrive, you realize that you are technically in another country. Belfast is in Northern Ireland which is part of the U.K., while Dublin is part of the independent country of Ireland. So while we had lots of euros to burn from or time in Dublin, we had to trade them in for pound notes for our time in Belfast. We also noticed that instead of the Irish flag, the union jack was flying everywhere. It's a city that is pulled in a lot of directions, but we really enjoyed it.
After dropping off our bags we took a little meander about the city stopping first in the center of the city in front of the Belfast City Hall. (above). It's a beautiful building but as is often our luck when we travel, the building has been under renovation for the last year and wasn't reopening until a week after we left. Boo! Well, we enjoyed it from the outside at least. Our next stop was St. Anne's Cathedral. St. Anne's is a Protestant church. See if you can tell from the following photos of the interior of the church what the Protestant tip off is:
If you noticed the British flags hanging around the church - congratulations, you identified the Protestant tip off! St. Anne's is beautiful inside and lovely outside as well.
We also checked out the Catholic cathedral in Belfast, St. Peters, however they had services in session at that time so we were only able to see the outside:
We thought Belfast was a very pretty city with lots of lovely sights wherever you walked.
The following photo is the Albert Memorial Clock - built to commemorate Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert - which for obvious reasons has a very British feel. Also, if my photo looks a little crooked, it's actually the clock itself which leans about 4 feet due to being built on marshy land near the river:
I liked the lions around the base of the clock:
Our hotel was in the Queens University area which is really nice. There are lots of great restaurants, plus the University itself and the adjacent Botanic Garden are beautiful and very relaxing to wander through:
It's really a lovely area!
The main reason we wanted to see Belfast is, having read so much about The Troubles, over the years, we thought it would be interesting to see how the city has changed. But we also wanted to learn more about the history of the Protestant v. Catholic conflict that raged through that area for so long.
To visit Belfast today, you would not immediately guess at the city's history or at the problems that continue to plague the area. We took one of Belfast's Black Taxi cab tours which takes you through the Protestant/Loyalist area and the Catholic/Republican area and found out that we were staying only a couple blocks away from the heart of the neighborhoods that have been torn apart by violence.
Once it was explained to us, it was very easy to figure out what neighborhood we were in. Protestant/Loyalist neighborhoods not only fly the Union Jack on every corner, they also paint their curbs red, white and blue - the colors of the British flag:
Both sides have painted these murals on the side of buildings that tell their side of the conflict and often commemorate friends and family who were killed by the other side. This one was also in the Loyalist area:
These next murals were in the Catholic/Republican area. They reflect other instances of political violence through history and in other areas of the world - you'll see a copy of Picasso's "Guernica" for instance:
I will say, that while I don't think there's anyway I could possibly understand all that is behind this conflict I am somewhat sympathetic to the Catholic side, if only because they are such a small segment of Belfast in comparison to the Loyalists. However, these murals were a little irritating as they equate the Catholic troubles in Ireland to what they perceive has been done to the Palestinians by Israel or what they claim the US is doing to cause Cubans to currently suffer. (Notice the requisite mural of Che Guevara.) They lost me a little here, as these are vastly different issues and anytime someone holds up Che Guevara as a hero I assume they are an idiot. Despite that however, both sides have clearly suffered due to this conflict and it still continues. A local Catholic would never be able to safely go into the Protestant neighborhood and vice versa. This is especially crazy as these are small neighborhoodds of just a few blocks and they are right next to each other, separated only by a street in most cases. Due to the violence over the years they have had to build walls through some of these streets to separate the two neighborhoods and prevent them from throwing explosives or even just rocks into each others yards and homes. Some of the walls are still up to maintain safety even though it's ten years since the peace agreement was signed:
I'm sure that things continue to improve in Northern Ireland, although our guide told us that two soldiers had been killed only 6 months ago, right before their unit went to Afghanistan, as part of the Protestant/Catholic conflict. But over all, it's a city that is beautiful and friendly and great fun. And I actually applaud them for bringing a difficult history out in the open - I think it can only help everyone move toward the future.
As a farewell to my post on Belfast, here are a few random photos I took around the neighborhoods where we walked and toured. There really are pretty things to see on every corner in Belfast:
I don't know if it's despite it's difficult history or because of it, but the Hubby and I really enjoyed Belfast. It's a great city with wonderful people and I would recommend that anyone going to Ireland include it in their visit.
Our train trip back to Dublin was a tour in itself - the countryside is so beautiful the train ride flew by!
Every view out the window was a postcard picture!
Ireland was awesome. I'm going to do a quick post next about a day trip I took to Mountmellick for an embroidery class. I'll get that up faster than the Belfast post - I promise!
Comments