10 Questions About…

After the Ulster Folk Museum, everyone else had a rest and I walked in horribly rainy-sleety weather to the Queen’s Quarter towards Queen’s College. There were a few nice secondhand shops and I enjoyed shopping – but I have to say the weather was ugly. It was fun to get a chance to walk around a bit. Belfast really is a lot more like London to me than like Dublin. The shops are shops I used to see in London, there’s less grass, and it just feels more like London.

Saturday evening we all went to eat at Deanes. It is a very nice restaurant and I have say that the wait staff was really nice about us showing up with 3 kids. In fairness we did phone ahead and we did come in early – 6:00. So we were leaving as most folks were arriving. ALso I have the say that aside from a lot of giggling the girls were very well behaved.

The food was amazing. It was the best fois gras I have ever had. And much to the delight of the girls I tried wood pigeon, which was good. (Not as good as fois gras, however.)

Saturday afternoon we headed about 10 miles out of Belfast to Cultra and the Ulster Folk Museum. It was cold. There was still a good amount of snow on the ground outside of the city center. We went through some nice parts of Belfast (Holywood) to get to the Folk Museum.

The Museum is like Fort Snelling back home in that it’s a reenactment of a town from 1900. You walk around the village and can walk through the various homes, businesses, churches, and public buildings. Apparently this place is packed in the summer. I can tell you it’s not packed on a cold, snowy Saturday in January – but we still enjoyed it.

While Patrick’s mom was clearly not a young girl in 1900, the girls were thrilled to hear that she had used many of the things that we saw in the cottages. She had made tea in a fireplace and she had used the lantern-type lamps.

There were chamber pots in the rooms of the poorer cottages and the girls though this was the funniest thing ever. (They took several pictures, which I will add below, for their cousins in Chicago.) The girls were sorely disappointed to hear that their Irish Grandma did not have a chamber pot as a kid.I nearly forgot about our fun conversation with the woman who worked at the shop in the Museum. She thought Dublin was the best place to visit. (Of course we thought Belfast was much more fun – proving that the grass is always greener.)

She grew up in Belfast and it was interesting to hear her talk about growing up in such a turbulent time. She said she was about 15 when the troubles really started (again) and so she had missed doing the stuff that most teenagers do – like going to the mall or dances or just hanging out. It kind of makes you think about the kids all over the world who have stilted childhoods because of turbulent times.

On Saturday morning we went to St George’s Market, which is very similar to the farmers market in St. Paul. There are lots of booths with food and various products. St George’s market is indoors – well not really indoors, but covered anyways. I think I saw a sign that said it was the largest covered marketing Europe. There was a band playing.

We each seemed to buy something but the real treat was our treats. We got chocolate marshmallow crepes. They were excellent! Aine got just marshmallow crepe, which isn’t that good.

Friday night Patrick and I went to a Burlesque Ball. It was part of a new-ish festival in Belfast called the Out to Lunch festival. Mostly it’s a serious of cheap, lunch time performances. Apparently they added a few night time shows this year – including the burlesque show.

It was fun – not too risqué. We tried to get pictures but with our camera we can take pictures in the dark or of things that are moving – not both. Plus we felt a little stalker-like with the camera.

Clearly we had to take a shot or two of the snow. It didn’t snow in Dublin so out timing, if we were missing snow, was perfect. This was the first snow in Belfast in 6 years, or so I heard. It snowed most of the night. I bet they had 3 inches of heavy snow by morning.

Unfortunately no one seems to have a shovel in Belfast. In fairness if I only needed one once every 6 years I wouldn’t have one either. So the walking was pretty treacherous – but we didn’t mind. It was a perfect morning to head into the W5 Children’s Museum.

The museum was great. The kids loved it. It was very reminiscent of the St Paul Children’s Museum – but there were a few new things. There was a science demonstration and Lily was picked as the helper – just as my sister Katie would have been chosen when we were kids.

I nearly forgot to mention the crabbiest lunch in history. We stayed too long at the W5 (forgot to mention that W5 stands for who, what, why, where, when). It was sleety and cold. We decided to eat at the historic Crown Bar. It is a nice bar – but it’s a bar. Patrick tried to order a beer, which he needed badly and they said no kids allowed. Quickly someone found us a nice little snug and in the end the food was good and it is very historic but it took a while for us to appreciate it. Sometimes we really just need a Champps, I guess.

Thursday afternoon we visited the Linen Hall Library. It’s more than 200 years old. Lily didn’t believe us about that at first – after all she pointed out, Minnesota is only 150 years old. It kind of put all of Europe versus the US in perspective.

Patrick found some gem for his research at the library. I enjoyed the “Belfaskating” art exhibit in the halls. You can see a couple of shots below. The pictures are hung in the stairwell. It makes a nice contrast to the rest of the library.

After the library Patrick, Kate and Aine went on “the big wheel” – a Ferris wheel they built near the City Hall. I was sad that the City Hall was closed during our visit. They are refurnishing it entirely. I think they said it would be done by 2009.

I learned that piece of info when Patrick and I talked to a woman from the Northern Ireland Tourism Bureau. We talked to her on assignment from the Irish Gazette. She was very interesting. She talked about the area’s confidence in the peace process today. How even a year ago no one would have guessed that on Monday 26 March 2007, the date of the British Government deadline for devolution or dissolution, Paisley would lead a DUP delegation to a meeting with a Sinn Féin delegation led by Gerry Adams which agreed on a DUP proposal that the executive would be established on May 8. Later in April, Paisley met in Dublin with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and publicly shook his hand, something Paisley had refused to do until there was peace in Northern Ireland. (I got the dates et al from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Paisley.)

She also told us about the Titanic. The Titanic was built in Belfast; I don’t know if I mentioned that earlier. They didn’t make a big deal about it for the long time but apparently they are also building confidence to commemorate the building of the titanic. The centennial of the building is in 2012. You can read all about that on Wikipedia too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic.

We had dinner at the Europa, a hotel that was bombed 32 times in the past. It’s supposed to be a very nice hotel. But the service was nothing compared to the super friendly accommodating people at Jury’s. What was nice is that there are a lot of windows, which made it easy to watch the snow as it fell. It was like a snow globe!

OK my final post on the taxi blog. Here are the pictures from the shipyard where the Titanic was built. The centennial of the Titanic is 2012. They are working on a bunch of museums that should be done by 2009. Apparently is took more than 4000 people to build the Titanic.

The boat pictured was built alongside the Titanic. It was actually just taken out of commission in the 1960’s. The dam looking space is where the Titanic was built.

It snowed last night in Belfast – but more on that later. We are having an amazing time. I had time to upload the videos. Both are about 30 seconds. The first if the mural that follows you. I hope the effect comes through. It was very cool and creepy.

And here’s just a bit from the tour guide.

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.

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!