Red, White and Blue v. Green White and Orange

Walk to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

Giant's Causeway

So this weekend the girls and I ventured up to Belfast in Northern Ireland.  For all of you who don't know Northern Ireland is still under British rule, and some stand by that and some don't agree with it.

We got into Belfast kind of late on friday night and we all just stayed in our hostel for the night, we had to get up fairly early for our tour bus the next day so we wanted to be fresh for that.

My bed was on the blue bunk at the top, quite comfy actually!  Didn't mind it!  I liked that we had this style of room, felt more like a typical hostel than the rest of them that we've stayed in.

Got up early to meet our bus tour, took us forever to find a cab, and never found one.  So, we ended up walking to the hostel where we had to meet the bus.  Belfast in the morning is a ghost town!  No one was out, kind of creepy...

But we got on our bus and headed on our way, I liked the tour guide, his sense of humor was very dry and he spoke in a mono-tone the whole time but I thought it was funny!  After about 2 hours on the bus we made it to the Giant's Causeway, we ate at this little pub called the Nook, which was delicious and then started our hike down to the site.

Spent about an hour at the Causeway.  This place was gorgeous, it was just amazing I can't even put it into words.  We all took a ton of pictures while getting rained/misted on.  It wasn't really raining but there was a constant mist from the sea that just drenched us.

We then got back on the bus and went to the Old Bushmills Whiskey Distillery.  We didn't take the tour but we were able to go into the gift shop and taste some whiskey.  The girls bought Irish coffee's, I didn't, not a huge fan of hot whiskey, but I did buy a dark chocolate bar with whiskey in it....yummmm!

After that we went to the rope bridge...this was neat, long hike down to it once again but was fun to cross it.  Right before we crossed it, it started to rain really hard!  We all just stood there and took it, our hair was sopping wet!  Luckily they didn't shut the bridge down and we were the first ones to go, that way we could get pictures of us individually on the bridge!

The bridge wasn't scary, I was more scared of dropping my camera more than anything else!  That would have sucked!

So we get across and take some more pictures then have to cross it again, this time I tried to get a picture of what was underneath the bridge but the wind picked up so I only got one.

After the bridge we got back on the bus and started to head back down to Belfast.  Our awesome tour guide let us sleep and didn't talk much over the loud speaker, which was nice.  I zonked out, ha my head bobbed so bad, I was very tired!

When we got back we immediately started to get ready to go out on the town.  Took a shower, which felt AMAZING after a long day in the rain, and then got a cab to the 'fun' part of town.  I went home early just because I wasn't feelin it.  Jen wasn't too far behind me, her and I stayed up in the hostel talking and venting, it was nice.  Ha she and I got three bags of chips and three candy bars from the vending machine and had a little girls night, I loved it!  The girls trickled in long after I did, and according to Erin I woke up and looked at her when she turned the lights on, but I don't remember any of it!  I was a tired little one!

The next day we got up, checked out but had the hostel hold our stuff and tried to find breakfast, well just so you all know Belfast on a Sunday morning is deserted!  There is no one is sight, there is nothing open, so we had to eat McDonalds, I wasn't too happy about this but it was food...therefore I wasn't too cranky!

We then took a 'black taxi' tour, which was a tour in a taxi around West Belfast showing us the effects the "troubles" have had and still have on that part of the country.  He told us a lot about the Protestant and Catholic struggles and the mural art that has come from it, along with what they call "The Berlin Wall of Belfast."  Seeing it gives you a strange feeling about the Berlin wall.

These were murals on the Protestant, or the British side of West Belfast.

This was the gate that would open during the week but only at certain times.  It was the only part of the wall that was a gate type, the rest of it was a brick wall, then a metal wall, then a gate, all stacked on top of each other.

On the Protestant side of the wall there was a lot of art, and graffiti, there are some serious artists in Belfast.  All of this is done by locals!

There was a lot of people that signed the wall, or wrote messages, this one stuck out to me!  There were others like "America apologizes for Bush-Texas", or people just signing their names saying that they were there!  It was really cool, and impacting to see.

This was on the complete opposite side of the wall, so where the people wrote on the Protestant side, this is the exact opposite side, the Catholic side!  Very different, a lot more neat and tiddy but also felt more cold.  There was a memorial set up for that neighborhood there for a fire that happen a while back where the protestants attacked that street.  There are also the names of the people that have been involved with the IRA displayed at that memorial.

The houses that backed up to the wall had fencing around their patios, so nothing could get in or out.  The houses also didn't have any glass in them, the windows were made of a thick plastic.

The taxi driver knew his stuff, I asked him how he learned about all of it and his response was by just living there.  He said he was interested in it and has done research but most of the information he knows is from just living and experiencing the different aspect of life there.  I wish I could have just sat down and picked his brain, it was very interesting.  Erin and I wanted to get a book about it all so we asked his opinion, he suggested "The Troubles" by Tim Pat Coogan, but the book stores don't carry it anymore, so I'm going to wait until I get back to the states and order it online.

From the taxi ride we went to lunch, had a delicious meal at the Crown Bar, which had a bit of history as well.  The designer of it was the same one that decorated the Titanic, so it was just elaborate and gorgeous inside and out.  The sitting areas were in separate little rooms, so when we finally could sit down to eat we were in our own private little room, but it was an open ceiling to the rest of the bar just had a door and windows surrounding it.  The food was delicious, I had beef and Guinness pie, which wasn't the best that I've had but still really good.

From there we got on our bus and headed back down to Dublin.  I started reading this new book I got call "Don't Ever Tell" by Kathy O'Beirne.  It's a true story about her accounts before and during her time in the Magdalene laundries, it's a very intense book to read but really well written.  I am about half way through it and have almost cried many times, it's a great book, tough to read because of the nature of it but worth it.  It just sickens me to think that the Catholic Church allowed horrible stuff to go on for so long, the laundries were just recently shut down in the 1980s here in Ireland!  If you're interested in this I'll tell you about it later, too much to go into on here....but a well worth it read in my opinion.

Not much else has happened, we're going to Scotland this weekend, which is our last weekend in Ireland, I'm so sad, I don't want to go home.  I think out of all the girls here I will have the hardest time going home.  I've been living in a fantasy land here, a great life away from school and grades.  If it weren't for school and my standing in school right now I would look forward to coming home more.  I just really don't want to have to go back to those problems again, but like everyone keeps telling me this was meant to be temporary and it's inevitable that I will go back...so I'm trying my hardest to be positive about it all...just difficult.

But the girls and I are planning living it up these last few weeks, we're going to go to a club called Dicey's tomorrow night, and hang out in the city another night...just trying to take it all in before we realize it's over!