Belfast

My next stop was Belfast, in Northern Ireland. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from Northern Ireland because of the violence there in the past, but a girl from New Zealand that I met a few months ago suggested that I go there so I decided I should check it out.
I flew there from Inverness (which has the smallest airport I've ever been in), and my couchsurfing host picked me up at the Belfast airport in his Porche. :D That night I didn't do much but my sightseeing started the next day with a bus tour to Giant's Causeway, which is a few hours away from Belfast. This was the first time I had done any type of organized tour with a group because I normally didn't want to pay for them or be associated with those groups of tourists all piling off of buses at the tourist attractions, but my host said that other people who had stayed with him in the past had enjoyed the Giant's Causeway tour. And after doing several day trips by myself just using public transportation, it sounded really nice to not have to make plans or worry about catching the returning mode of transportation, with those tours you just get on and off the bus when they tell you to. And I found one for only 20 pounds, which sounded like it was within my budget. And it turned out to be very good value because we other things along the way as we drove up the coast, so if I had tried to do all of that with public transportation it would have much more expensive. So here is a photo tour of everything I saw on that tour:

Carrikfergus Castle

Cute little church, don't remember where it was

View out the window

Scenery when we stopped at Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge

Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge

Bridge from a distance

 And onto the main attraction...Giant's Causeway! It is a National Heritage site I believe, and there is a story that goes along with it about 2 giants that get into a fight and one of them builds the causeway across the water so they can meet. But the one who comes over gets scared away and rips up most of it on his way back, just leaving the part that is visible now.

Scenery on the short walk approaching the causeway

The causeway coming into view

You can start to see the distinctive rock towers in this picture

All of the rocks are in this cool pattern, perfectly interlocking

At one point, all of the cracks in the rocks are filled with coins people have left there, and some of them are very rusted and bent from the elements. 

This is the area that had the coins between the rocks

The causeway area seen from a hiking trail that goes up a hill on one side

So overall the tour was definitely a good idea. It was a good price, I got to see more than I normally would have, and the tour guide was great.

The next day I went into the center of Belfast and saw the sights there. I went to the city hall and got a free tour, saw the cathedral (which unlike most other cities was not free, so I only got to see the outside and a little bit of the inside that was outside the area where you had to pay), and walked around the Titanic Quarter. Belfast had a very active shipbuilding industry and it is the city where the Titanic was built, so there is a museum and you can go see the Titanic's dock. Because of my budget, I didn't pay to do either of those things, but I walked around and saw what I could. After that I just wandered around the city center for a bit. It is a much more modern looking city than many I have been to, and it's very industrial because industries like shipbuilding, ropemaking, and linen production are what have made it prosperous over the years.

The next day I went to the Ulster Museum, which was free so it was within my budget. :P I also walked around the Botanic Gardens near the museum and walked past Queen's University. Here are some pictures of my sightseeing those two days:

City Hall

City Hall

St. Anne's Cathedral

Ceiling of a small chapel in the cathedral

Entrance to the cathedral

Leaning tower

The Big Fish

Titanic Museum

Titanic Dock and Pump House (you can't see it very well in this picture, but it's a very deep area where the Titanic was docked)

The Harland and Wolff cranes, called Samson and Goliath.

The SS Nomadic, the last surviving ship from the White Star Lines, which made the Titanic.

The dock and pump house for the SS Nomadic. This is basically what the Titanic's dock looked like, except it was much bigger. 

SS Nomadic

Inside of the dome on the city hall building

Inside City Hall, with the tour guide in the picture

Me sitting in the Lord Mayor's chair

Me wearing a robe that the city officials would wear. The person taking the picture couldn't figure out how to use my phone to take a picture so I had no idea when the picture was going to be taken, hence the weird face. 

Beautiful ceiling in city hall

In the afternoon after I got back from the museum, my host took me on a tour of some of the murals around Belfast. There are murals all over the city, so anywhere you drive you are bound to see at least a few. They are repainted every so often, on a variety of themes, and I was surprised to learn that there is no oversight or permit process involved in when and where the murals are painted. It seems that anyone who wants to can paint one, but even without any regulation all of them are really well done. They are also kept completely free from graffiti, even politically themed ones are not vandalized by those with the opposing view, which I think it great given the political and religious tension that still exists. We saw murals about Irish history, C.S. Lewis (who is from Belfast) and Narnia, and both Unionist and Nationalist murals since we went to both sides of the city. Generally, the Protestant neighborhoods who support Northern Ireland being part of the UK are in East Belfast and the Catholic neighborhoods who support a united Ireland are in West Belfast, but as one mural pointed out, it's not just about religion, it's about nationality. It just happens that it is also typically divided on religious lines, because in the past, Catholics were often discriminated against so they were the ones who were most likely to support governing themselves separately from the UK. Here is a sampling of the murals, although it was getting dark when we went so the pictures aren't great and I stopped being able to take pictures once it was dark.

The first mural we saw, a very large one with several scenes depicting historical events as told by Protestant Unionists. The far left of this picture is the text from the Ulster Covenant, which was signed by Protestants saying they wanted to remain part of the UK.

Titanic mural

This is a little hard to see, but that same Titanic mural is in the middle, and to each side is a mural supporting Unionist paramilitary groups. There were several of these type of murals that showed masked men with guns. The one of the right here basically says they support the right to defend themselves if they are attached.

Narnia themed mural. I saw an even better one but it wasn't in a good place to stop and take a picture.

After that it got too dark to take pictures, so I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of murals on the other side of the city. My host lived in East Belfast, so the murals we saw first were Unionist themed, and then we went to the other side of the city, where the murals that had a political message were Nationalist themed. Another interesting aspect of the political murals in this area is that there were murals about other conflicts as well and in support of other political figures. For example, there was a mural of Nelson Mandela, one in support of Palestine, one against the American troops going into either Iraq or Afghanistan...all things that I could understand why they were depicted there, either because they were people who had fought against oppression or situations in which the Irish could relate because they saw it as an outside force oppressing another group. I wish I could remember more specifics about the murals I wasn't able to take pictures of because it's a fascinating look at the history and current tensions of the area. If I get a chance to go back to Belfast I definitely want to go back to those murals.

To get from one side of the city to the other, we drove past the peace wall, which is a huge wall that separates Protestant neighborhoods from Catholic neighborhoods. It was crazy to me to see that, because I had never been somewhere before that had physical walls to keep people away from each and stop violence. During the day there are gates in the wall that you can pass through freely, but at night those gates are closed, so if you want to go to the other side you have to drive to the center of the city where the walls end. This is to keep people from sneaking across and attacking each other, and then quickly retreating back to their own neighborhood, which apparently was a problem before the wall existed. And even though the violence has subsided in recent years, the people still do not trust each other enough to take the wall down, in fact my host said since the worst of the violence ended there have been more walls built instead of walls taken down. He also said that it tends to the less affluent and less educated areas that still have the walls dividing them, and that areas in the north and south of the city and where the people are wealthier they can't be bothered with the old rivalries, but the areas near the walls still have tension. I didn't ask my host directly about his views because I wasn't sure if that would be considered rude, but he lives on the eastern side of the city and just listening to how he talked about things on each side of the wall, I got the impression that he is more supportive of Northern Ireland being a part of the UK. Either that or he is one of those people that just can't be bothered to be involved one way or the other, but at the very least he seems content with living in the UK, and it didn't sound like he actively supports the groups who want Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland. I just can't imagine living in a situation like that where the population is so divided about the country they want to live in, and where there are physical barriers keeping people apart. Even though I didn't feel any tension while I was there and the city in many ways seems to have gotten over the Troubles that began in the 60's, some of that mentality still survives, and it is epitomized by the walls. I had also forgotten exactly how recently the Republic of Ireland became a country separate from the UK, and how recently there had been severe violence and terrorism in Northern Ireland, so being there made me realize how recently things improved there.

So after that eye-opening experience, my host, his girlfriend, his two roommates and I went out for dinner at Crown Bar, which is a cool old bar in the center of Belfast. Then we went to a bar around the corner called Fibber Magee's and saw some live music, which I really enjoyed. It was a great night, and I had a lot of fun with the group of people I was with. We were a very multinational group which was cool. My host was Irish, his roommates were Belgian and Italian, his girlfriend was Thai, and me, the American, and then later one the roommate's friends joined us, and he was Spanish. That night was really fun, as was my whole trip to Belfast. It is a cool city with a lot of very interesting history, and I'm really glad I decided to go there and got to experience it and meet such cool people. I will leave you with a picture of the band we went to see the last night, although my camera does very badly in low light so it's not the best.