Filed under: Belfast
Today we took a black taxi tour of Belfast. It was terrific. Our driver/tour guide was named Jimmy. He was so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the history of Belfast. The first part of the tour, the bulk of the tour really was spent touring the areas where “the troubles” took place.
The unrest has been going on since the 1620’s but more recently I’d say they drew new flames around 1968. The fight was between Catholics and Protestants, Irish Nationalists and British Loyalists. The deadliest year was 1972. You can read more in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles). A ceasefire began in 2000; last year even greater steps were taken towards a lasting peace. Today we learned that an Indian community now owns one of the churches (or maybe hospital, it was a ton of info to remember) and plans to turn it into a mosque – that ought to help dispel some tensions.
One side note – Jimmy remarked to me that Patrick’s mom was very knowledgeable about the history of the area – I had to tell him that she is very knowledgeable in anything news-related. She is impressive that way!
Our tour started on the Falls Road, which is a Catholic area. Then we toured Shankill, which is a protestant area. And we ended with a tour of the place where they built the Titanic and the city center.
The Falls Road and Shankill are parallel from each other – and really only a “peace wall” separates them in most places. I took a ton of pictures – mostly of the murals and different views of the peace walls. I’m going to just post them into 3 groups:
Falls Road
Shankill
Titanic/Others
I also took a video of an amazing mural of gunman in Shankill, whose eyes and gun seem to follow you as you walk by him – kind of like those Jesus pictures that open and close their eyes. I hope the effect is apparent in the video. I may not get to that today.
Falls Road:
Shankill
OK it’s gettign very late now. I wanted to post these tonight. I’ll post the pictures of the rest of the city tomorrow. I am hoping that Patrick really will fill in some details here. All of my energy has been spent on pcitures.
Filed under: Belfast
We arrived in Belfast. Our timing was amazing. We caught the bus in Cabinteely at 11:58 and somehow managed to catch the train in town at 1:35. I forgot how much I like to take the train. Lily and I worked on our times tables. We got into Belfast at 3:30. We booked into the hotel, which is very nice. In fact they could not have been nicer at Jury’s about getting us a room that would accommodate 5 people.
We walked around a little bit. The girls have quickly learned not to ask for quarters or euros – but pounds. We had a nice dinner at the hotel – where again they could not have been more accommodating. The waiter, Lily’s new best friend gave us refills of rolls about 4 times!
Filed under: Dublin
On Monday we met up with Kevin, KC, Quinlan (8), Brenna (3), and Rowan (4 months, I think). They are from Minnesota but are living for the school year in Galway while KC teaches at NUI Galway.
On the way we stopped by Trinity because we had some extra time. We met up with Kevin and crew at St Stephen’s Green and went to a playground. I swear it was 60 degrees. The kids really enjoyed playing and we enjoyed talking to the parents. After playing we went to a very OK – but perfect for kids – restaurant for lunch.
The Kevin’s crew headed back for the train to Galway and we made our way home. We stopped by the National Gallery – where we got the family packs for the first time. They are great! They include paper and crayons (colors) and a scavenger hunt sort of thing for different ages. We really enjoyed it.
Filed under: Dublin
Friday night we went out to an Italian cooking lesson. I was very excited; Patrick was not. We had plenty of time so we took the first bus into town which we thought would leave us walking for about 20 minutes. An hour later we’re still walking through Ranelagh, Rathmines, and Rathgar – some very beautiful neighborhoods, which I’m sure are even more beautiful if you’re not wearing high heel boots!
We called the cooking school and found out that the class had been cancelled – Patrick’s prayers were answered.
So we went into town, had a nice dinner, and popped into the International Bar for one drink before heading home. Fortunately or unfortunately we ran into our new best friends Chris and Anna from Manchester.
It started when Chris asked me if there were any Irish in Dublin. Often it can feel as if there aren’t and as if Polish or Latvian has become the national language. I had to laugh because I was part of the proof that there aren’t any Irish left.
What’s funny was that Patrick and I had been kind of talking about that at dinner. Right now there are about 1-1.5 million people in Dublin. They are predicting 2 million by 2019 – and most of that increase will be immigrants.
So Dublin is very international. I think it’s kind of fun. You hear lots of languages and accents. It’s a huge influx of young people too. I’ve already written a blog post on the impact of this influx on social services, such as schools. But from a fun perspective, it’s good but it makes Dublin (and possibly all of Ireland but I can’t say) a different place, which I wondered if that would have a negative impact on tourism.
According to our new best friends – it does. They were just in town for 3-4 days and they liked it alright but they didn’t have plans to return. I think it wasn’t what they were expecting and they thought it was too expensive. And they were working with Sterling which is twice as valuable as the dollar.
Anyways we had a fun night with them. We took a rickshaw to the last pub – which I believe was the last pub open in town. We stayed out way too late because our new best friends were in their 20’s. Anna gave me her email address, which started as anna1984… luckily I stopped myself before I asked if that was the year she graduated 🙂
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