Weekend trip to Northern Ireland

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After surviving a whole week of classes we decided to venture off and explore a little. We looked up the cheapest flight and it happened to be in Northern Ireland. So we flew there for just about 48 hours and had the best time. In the words of one of my friends “Derry wasn’t really on my list of places to go, I just wanted to hang out with you guys and make friends. But wow! Derry has just been the best.”



Some Shackleton Whiskey at the airport. This is for my Grandmother who has been trying to track our relation to Ernest Schackleton for years.




To start, Derry is just a 45 minute plane ride from Edinburgh so we got on the plane, took a quick nap and landed in no time. We were feeling confident and excited for what the weekend had in store, and it was only noon on Friday. Then someone went and said, “Wow! look at us: world class travelers” and things fell apart. We almost got on the wrong bus and the driver insisted we were mistaken- I assume he gets that a lot. Then, we didn’t have the right change for the bus and it was so expensive we decided to take a taxi. We couldn’t find any taxis and couldn’t call one to fit all 5 of us. We had to find something to do because the Airbnb we were staying at wasn’t available for more than 2 hours. We finally decided to meet at an Italian restaurant. It ended up not existing, just like every restaurant on that street. (I have to let Google Maps know how inaccurate they are.) The one we could find looked expensive, but we were starving and didn’t have much choice. It ended up being awesome! A hug, delicious 2 course meal and it wasn’t that expensive.



We followed the directions to the apartment and Google Maps once again hurt us by sending us to the wrong location. But we were unaware and couldn’t figure out why the code wouldn’t work. An Irishman walked past us and told us that the Airbnb we were looking for was two houses up. We checked it out and it clearly wasn’t right so we returned and were laughing at the situation. The man came out and started screaming and cussing us out. We were taken aback but couldn’t understand him at first because of his thick accent. He started walking towards us and (completely shocked) we backed up and finally heard him scream, “It’s up the street!” So we walked that way. Still no Airbnb! He was wrong. A nice pair of women pulled their car over and asked us if we needed help. They directed us the right way and their kindness was something we experienced for the remainder of our trip.

After we stopped at the house, and had a laugh at our misfortune, we started our adventure. This small city has a lot of history and we started our walk passing beautiful churches and crossing the Peace Bridge. It is a beautiful modern bridge to mark the peace between different sides of town in the conflict between Unionists and Nationalists.





Peace Bridge in Derry at Sunset

We planned to walk to a park on the far side. On our way. we walked past a beautiful building that looked like a church. We decided to stop by and learned it was actually known as the Guildhall.





It was built by an architect that designed churches and is full of stained glass to commemorate important events and people of Derry. The front windows had important kings and queens of the United Kingdom. The right side had windows that marked different units of military that served in WWI. There is a large organ that plays music in the main hall.



Derry was also the location of Bloody Sunday and the Guildhall was the site of an inquest into the incident. We really didn’t know about Bloody Sunday before coming and I regretted that. I knew only part of the conflict in Northern Ireland but we learned all about the conflict and ‘the Troubles,’ (conflicts between those who wanted Northern Ireland to stay with the United Kingdom and those who wanted it to join Ireland). The town had a great display on it and still wears the scars of this conflict. The power struggle between England and Northern Ireland is still apparent today. Just a few days before our vacation there, Northern Ireland was again awarded a devolved parliament. We ran into two employees at the Guildhall every day and they became our friends. One of them explained when I asked that before the most recent elections, the Conservatives had ‘needed’ the Irish Government to support them and the Irish government (DUP) was trying to leverage their power. Then in December 2019 the Conservatives won a landslide victory and no longer needed the support of the Irish party. Talks then resumed and they were awarded their Parliament which allows regional control of some policy issues not reserved for the United Kingdom’s Parliament. Sorry for the anecdote-politics is sort of my favorite thing.



We then walked closer to the park and found some cute pubs, and a beautiful church. Once we arrived at the park it was long dark, so we decided to try out one of those cute pubs and it was a great choice. We stayed for hours drinking Irish beer and talking about our lives. Then we decided to find another pub to explore. Google Maps once again failed us and we walked back and forth a couple of times. We finally found a great pub with live music called Blackbird. We had a snack and Braden ate the ‘best burger of his life.’ It was just a lovely night.

Next morning we woke up early and took a train along the coast further north. The scenery was absolutely beautiful- from cliffs to rolling hills and beaches.






Castlerock is a town on the north coast and it holds some amazing ruins. On our way we overheard an older Irish man remembering his childhood and how his mother would bring him and his siblings here every Sunday and picnic on the beach. One of the coolest things about Derry was experiencing how the residents actually lived, instead of being touristy. We took a thirty minute hike up a hill to Downhill Demesne. It is a former estate of Frederick, 4th Earl of Bristol, and it has fallen into disrepair. Now the government owns it and opens the grounds to tourism. We hiked through a forest to see what happened to be a mausoleum. From there we could see green hills everywhere and the ruins.






Then we saw the temple on the hill. It is the only building to be preserved and sits right on the edge of the cliff. The views were amazing and the pictures cannot capture it. We got caught in a couple of freak rain storms and it felt like we were in a movie. We were almost completely alone to experience it.





We hiked back into the town to take the train back and meet the rest of our friends in Derry. On our way back we found a local football game and the beach. We didn’t want to get a bunch of sand in our shoes so we just stopped by. I wanted to swim but it was a little cold.



We took the train back and met our friends. Then we walked into town and took a self-guided walking tour. Derry is a walled city and they have some of the best preserved walls that have suffered multiple sieges by Jacobites and Kings. There are still 8 original canons on the walls.



Then we walked to a recommended bar with live Irish music, which was full- so we walked to a connected sports bar and spent the night there. We asked a man sitting next to us to take a group picture and his group said it wasn’t a good enough picture because we didn’t have any drinks. So his group gave us some of their drinks to fake it. We thanked him and went back to talking. A couple minutes later he interrupted us with a fresh beer with two straws in it and took more pictures. The women cheered at us to drink it and we pretended it was a tropical drink.







The next morning we had a couple hours to walk around and visit the tower museum. One of our friends who we met in the Guildhall was also there and talked to us about our weekend. It was nice to express how much we appreciated the people of this town. I absolutely loved my time there, as did everyone else. I would recommend it to anyone and would definitely go back.

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