Belfast

Royal Ave. with lots of shopping I didn't do.

Police cars in Belfast are covered in armor. Behind are the political murals which line the walls on Falls Road.

Sinn Fein building. HQ for the old Republican political wing of the provisional IRA, who are longer an active terrorist organization.

Ghan and I at the peace wall. Good Friday, 1998 was when the peace treaty was signed. Only a decade ago!

Last weekend I went to Belfast with Ghan who is another Mountain View ambassador visiting Dublin this quarter. It was a short trip, leaving Saturday afternoon (was supposed to be Saturday morning, but Friday turned out to be a big night for the two of us) and returning Sunday evening. I have to admit though, it was the most planned, unplanned trip I have ever done!

We left the Bus Eireann station at 1pm and arrived 3 hours later in Belfast. Belfast is in north Ireland and is considered to be part of the UK. We learned that quickly since our Euro's were useless and had to find an ATM machine to get pound sterling. We arrived with no place booked to spend the night, but we had our eyes set on the International Youth hostel on the lower end of the city. When we got there, there were no vacancies. We asked for other hostels close by, but the guy at the counter said if they didn't have vacancies, none of the hostels would have vacancies! Things sounded grim, since we didn't want to throw down a lot of money on a hotel, but we grabbed a city guide book and started calling all the hostels in the city. One by one they were all booked. Finally we had one hostel left to call and they had 2 beds available in a 20 bed room! Success! We took it, but the hostel was at the other end of the city. No matter, we walked the 30 minutes to get there (taking some shady streets along the way) and walked into the Linen House hostel. I liked this place. Clean rooms and plenty of showers and bathrooms, though the lighting was pretty bad. The guy at the front desk was super nice and informative. We booked our rooms for only £6.50! Then he set up a black cab tour of the city for us and we also arranged for a pick up there for a tour of the Giant's Causeway, Bushmills distillery and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bride which we purchased earlier at the International Youth hostel.

I was excited we had everything booked now! We had an hour to kill before our cab tour so we walked to grab a pint and found out we were only a block away from Royal Ave. which had all the shopping and the quickest route to the bars! It was great. We returned from the city tour which turned out to be more interesting than I expected it to be. A lot of history behind the Republicans and Loyalists. There are murals scattered around the city recognizing both sides, plaques to remember those who died and a peace wall which still divides the two sides. Everyone recommended this tour and now I know why. I probably wouldn't have ventured off to these parts of the city without our tour guide, Bobby. My coworkers also thought I was crazy taking pictures of some of the places which I did, including the Sinn Fein building!

Nonetheless, our tour ended with our driver dropping us off at the city's oldest bars called The Crown. We ate dinner here. The food was hearty. I tried to get as much vegetables as possible, but that wasn't happening. I ordered the chicken with chips, assuming it would be the healthiest meal (fish and chips, beef stew, Irish beef were my other options), but it turned out to be covered in cheese with a slab of bacon underneath it. Also my chips were drowning in garlic butter. Peas and carrots were there too and I made sure I ate them all, though I don't know how many more meals I can eat like this!

After dinner it was go time. Our night was long, expensive and ridiculous! Ghan is a great travel companion. We found out Bushmills was only £2.60, so we ended up drinking a lot of those either on ice (me) or neat (Ghan).

The Giant's Causeway. Lot's of hexagon shaped rocks.

Me climbing the rocks! Rocks are fun.

Carrick-a-Rede bridge. Used by salmon fisherman to reach a small island fishery. Now it doubles as a tourist trap!

"Is that it?" Wish we spent more time at Bushmills.

Bushmills distillery! MmmmMmmm.

We woke up at 8am the next day and got ready for a 9am pick up for the mini coach tour. We left the city at 9:30am and returned just before 7pm! A 9.5 hour tour! Ugh, it was tiresome, but the Giant's Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede bridge and Bushmills were all worth it. I even picked up a bottle of Bushmills 12 year which you can only buy at the distillery. MmmMmmmmm! You can read the links about each site, but to sum it up the Giant's Causeway was a really good hike and had a lot of naturally shaped hexagon rocks to climb. The Carrick-a-Rede bridge was a total tourist trap, but the weather was perfect and had some great views. Finally, Bushmills was awesome! You can smell the whiskey from the parking lot. Too bad we only got a half hour there.

As we got back to city center we had minutes to spare to get to the bus station so we could catch the 7pm bus home (since all the buses leave on the hour). We ran out of the tour bus and towards the station, making the 7pm ride home! Another 3 hours later we were back in Dublin! I don't think it could have worked out any better!