Belfast, Causeway, Derry

Last weekend five of the american girls and me went on a couple of tours up to northern ireland, into belfast and over to the giants causeway.

we had to be in dublin by 8 am, which meant leaving where we were at six thirty because the train comes seldom that early on a saturday.

we get on the tour bus and get going. ireland is incredibly small, and it probably doesnt take five hours to drivefrom the northernmost tip to the southernmost one. On the way there, we stopped and saw St. Peter's church, a fairly famous church where St. Oliver Plunkett's head rests (seriously, its just his head, and its sitting out for people to see.)

We then went to an ancient Celtic graveyard with these HUGE Celtic crosses. Some were more than two stories high, and it was quite beautiful.

We got into Belfast and took a tour in a smaller taxi of areas important to the Catholic-Protestant troubles. I don't know if yall know this, but N. Ireland is a completely different country than Ireland. N Ireland is part of the UK and is ruled by their laws. Long story short, when the irish rebelled and fought for independence during WWI, they ended up ceding four counties in the north to the UK and establishing Ireland as a separate country, which is why the country is divided. Within Ireland, especially the north, there are protestants and catholics. The protestants are generally of british desent from way back when and are pro-uniting with the UK. Catholics (in the majority) have always been here and are pro-making ireland its own republic. This made for very bloody conflicts from about the 1960's til 10 or fifteen years ago. N. Ireland was a very dangerous place to be up until recently, as these groups and their respective extremists were trying to kill each other and either reestablish or overthrow british rule.

So anyway, if you survived that last paragraph you will understand what im talkinga bout when i talk about the murals we saw. Some groups have put their legacy on the sides of buildings in the form of giant paintings that tell the story of the troubles, as they were called. There is a big berlin wall-like structure that divides Belfast in half, separating the Catholic part from the Protestant part. So depending what side you went to, the murals told very different parts of the same story. I took pictures of many of them. In other parts, people have painted murals to draw attention to conflicts and issues in the world today. There are a significant number of anti-bush murals (just throwing that out there.)

We walked around Belfast for awhile, seeing churches, schools, the botanical gardens, pubs, etc. The girls i was with turned in ridiculously early, and i was a bit peeved about that, so i hung out in our hostel and talked to some other travelers.

In the morning we got up super early again and went to the Giants Causeway. I really can't explain it in words, so ill show pictures. Its basically a place where square and hexagonal columns raise up naturally out of the sea near the beach. On the way there we stopped at this neat rope-bridge built between the mainland and a little island. We were so far north that you could actually see scotland. We then went to the causeway, and then on to Derry, a decent-sized city in N Ireland that was a site of much of the bloodshed during the troubles. Our tour guide was the son of the former mayor during the early 1990's, so he gave us a pretty first-hand account of what it was like to grow up in such an area.

I then had my own little adventure coming home. The tour company wasnt sure when the tour bus would be coming back to dublin, so all the girls wanted ot take a city bus to dublin and then take the train home. the bus was £9 (about $20) so i said screw that, ill take my chances with the tour bus, it might leave later but its free. So after everyone got off i waited all of 30 minutes before a driver showed up and personally escorted me, in a giant bus all alone, back to dublin. he parked the bus outside of dublin and we took a cab into the city (AND he didnt charge me) where i walked around for a bit and then took the train home. So i saved a bucket of money and only got back about an hour after everyone else, at 10.

If you've made it this far, congrats, im very proud. Im going to go running so here are the pictures with labels so you know what you are looking at.

Phrase of the day: "They get on like a house on fire." (they get along well together.)

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