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Published: February 10th 2008
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Belfast City Hall
The Wedding Cake of Belfast So since I don't have classes on Mondays or Fridays, most of my weekends this semester will be spent traveling around the UK. My first trip with Carrie, Joy and Andrea was to Belfast this past weekend. Carrie and I left on Friday and had a very nauseating half hour plane ride. By 2pm we were checked into our hostel - Paddy's Palace - and were headed back into the city center. We didn't want to do any of the major sightseeing until Joy and Andrea arrived, so we wandered around for a while. We decided to try and find the shipyards where Titanic was built. We could see the massive cranes - Sampson and Goliath - but couldn't seem to find our way to the shipyards. So we walked along the River Lagan for a bit, found the Big Fish statue and wandered some more. We figure we may have walked about six miles in all, since our hostel was down by Queen's College and our attempt to get the the shipyards led us quite a ways. The rest of the evening was spent resting our legs and attempting to get some homework done before heading off to bed.
On
Saturday morning, Carrie and I took a Paddywagon tour to Giant's Causeway and Derry. Our tour guide/driver, Joseph, was very informative and liked to sing. We heard all kinds of songs from California to Danny Boy to U2. We also learned a lot. As we were leaving Belfast, he pointed out a hill/mountain that was supposed to be a sleeping giant and was, I guess where Jonathan Swift got one of the ideas for Gulliver's Travels. We also got the complete history of the Troubles in Ireland reaching all the way back to Henry VIII and the break from the Catholic Church. We also heard the tale of Finn MacCool who was a giant of Ireland and was also very wise. One day he saw on the coast of Scotland a beautiful princess who he wanted to bring back to Ireland. So he set about building a bridge from Ireland to Scotland. When he reached Scotland, he found that the Princess was the princess of the giant of Scotland, Benadonner, but Finn MacCool took the Princess back to Ireland where they were married and had a son. Years later after their son left home, the giant Benandonner came looking for
The Ring of Thanksgiving
A statue that stands over the River Lagan the Princess. Finn MacCool hid in his son's cradle, for Benandonner was the bigger giant. When Benandonner saw Finn MacCool he lit back to Scotland, for if the baby was that big, its father must be enormous. As he went, Benandonner ripped up the stones of the Causeway so that Finn MacCool could not follow him back to Scotland. The Causeway was not, Joseph assured us, created by volcanic activity and lava. Either way, Giant's Causeway was beautiful with the waves crashing all around it and the geometric formations of the rocks. From Giant's Causeway we headed to Derry, and stopped to free a sheep and hear the story of a haunted castle on the way. Derry was greatly affected by the Troubles in Norther Ireland. Down in Bogside, which was once Free Derry because it was supposed to be free from British soldiers, are ten murals depicting scenes from the 1970s Civil Rights movement. After seeing the murals, Carrie and I walked the city walls which were much wider than the walls at York or Conwy. At least 6 people could have walked abreast. These walls were also built much later than the other ones which probably had a
bit to do with it. After that it was back on the bus for the ride back to Belfast. On the way we passed through the area where both the words and the music to the song Danny Boy or Londonderry Air originated. Back in Belfast, we waited until Joy and Andrea arrived and then went in search of Thai Tanic for dinner. We then attempted to find some live music but everywhere was extremely crowded so we gave up in favor of tea and bed back at the hostel.
We started off Sunday with a Black Taxi Tour of Belfast which took us on both the Protestant and Catholic sides of the city. We saw the Protestant murals, the Sinn Fein headquarters, the Catholic murals, and the wall that separates the two sides of the city. The gates that divide the city are still locked every night at 11:00. After the tour we found lunch and then it started to rain. That pretty much ended our sightseeing for the day, but Monday morning before our plane left we wandered the city center a bit more and went back down to the River Lagen.
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