Advertisement
Published: March 31st 2008
Edit Blog Post
We’ve made it to beautiful Cambridge - gorgeous blue skies, spring not quite here yet (it snowed last Sunday and the remains of the snowman are in the backyard) but buds are bursting so there is hope for warmer weather!! Today we’ve “done” the Cambridge colleges with the best guide in the city - Fi’s sister Barbara, who seems to be able to open doors that others can’t. Those who have done the tour with Barb before will understand what that means!
The trip from Portstewart to Belfast was great - countryside reminiscent of the Connemara from the previous week with streams, tussock country, stone huts and the ever present blacked legged and nosed long haired sheep. There was ice from hail on the roadsides - very chilly!! Stopped off at the Carrick Fergus castle - but it was closed. It looked great, right on the coast with models of soldiers leaning over the parapets for a bit of realism
People complain that Adelaide is closed on the weekend - we were in Belfast over Easter and it was also very quiet! As a city, Belfast has less obvious character and vibrancy than others in Ireland - Derry and Dublin, for
example. On the “Lonely’s” advice we took a Black Cab tour (Billy the driver) of the Falls Road and Shankhill - a packed two hours on both sides of the Peace Line showing such strong evidence still of the Troubles with many murals and plaques in memory of too many deaths (one only a week ago). One section of the Peace Line is a wall where people from all over the world have left peace messages. As in Derry - we felt like intruders into others’ private spaces, but with a sense that the more people who know what happened during the Troubles the less likely they will occur again - and knowing about it can only turn people towards seeking peace.
Other Belfast sites included a walk along the River Lagan and then through the Botanic Gardens and Queens University and its beautiful buildings. The Botanic Gardens had lovely beds of polyanthus, blue/purple hyacinths and tulips which will look fantastic in several weeks!! There were drifts of daffodils making gorgeous displays (in numbers only to be dreamed about by Adelaideans!), and also bluebells. We drove up Cave Hill to look at the Belfast Castle and to get a sense
of the layout of Belfast - it took some time because road maps don’t show where the Peace Line blocks roads so we had lots of traffic diversions. We also called in to the International Irish Dancing Competitions and caught up with a family from Melbourne over for the events. Girls of all ages in the competition wore identical curly wigs and heavy makeup, and had fake tans that were too chestnut in colour. Shades of “Little Miss Sunshine”....so much beauty hidden by the convention of all looking the same.
And so to Dublin - a very busy, cosmopolitan, clean, energetic city!! It’s fantastic. The main road in the city centre, O’Connell St, is very wide and paved, with statues and the Millennium Spire down the centre of the road - one of the most impressive “main streets” that you could find anywhere. A major feature towards the bottom is the Post Office - a very large columned building which was the headquarters of the 1916 Easter Uprising. It’s a beautiful building - sandstone, faced with tall pillars and lots of dark woodwork and polished brass inside. The city is split in two by the River Liffey, lined with pedestrian
quays and crossed by a number of bridges - some pedestrian only, some for cars, and buses. Trinity College, the cobbled and pedestrian-free Temple Bar area, larger retail stores, the Parliament buildings, the Bank of Northern Ireland and the original medieval centre of Dublin are all located across the Liffey from O’Connell St. The famous Book of Kells is held at Trinity College with a fantastic technical display - probably where Geraldine Brooks did her research for the Book of the People. Temple Bar comes alive at night, with loads of restaurants and buskers - it’s where we finally spent time in an Irish pub listening to Irish music, and highly recommend Oliver St John Gogarty’s pub for atmosphere and food - not to mention the Guinness. We took a hop on hop off bus tour of Dublin - excellent way to learn about the city. It included Oscar Wilde’s birthplace and statue (appropriately enough the only coloured statue in Dublin), Molly Malone’s statue, St Patrick’s Cathedral (where Jonathan Swift is buried), the Kilmainham Gaol (where the Easter rebels were executed with undue haste in 1916 - heart-rending stories) and the Dublin Writer’s Museum which is in a gorgeous old
house and celebrates the works of the like of W B Yeats, J Joyce, O Goldsmith, Wilde, Swift et al.
After crossing the glass-like Irish Sea on 27/3 we drove through north Wales, including the Snowdownia National Park (with snow capped mountains) - absolutely stunning and definitely to be revisited - to Stoke on Trent and the potteries. We had a great B&B in Stoke on Trent - a 17th century house on a farm - called Hollinghurst and just gorgeous - and then on to Cambridge in rain and mist, but with a relatively easy drive down the A500, the M1 and the A14.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.422s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.046s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb