Northern Ireland: a photo tour of Belfast and Giant's Causeway Causeway

To be sure, to be sure.... It has happened again. We have been too busy hunting for leprechauns and crossing the North Channel over to Scotland that I have been a bit slow with my blogging lately. Although I think the only people that may notice this are the odd family member or two checking in to see if we are still alive, I will make an attempt to get up to speed a bit over the next week or so. Since leaving Amsterdam we have been to Belfast, Dublin, Galway, Glasgow and are now in Edinburgh. We are making our way over to the west coast of Scotland and as of next week, we will be helpx-ing at a hostel in a little fishing village called Oban for a few weeks (no more packing up and carrying my bag every few days!). So here is the first part of our journeys over the last few weeks, starting in Northern Ireland.

AS we got off the plane from Amsterdam and landed in Northern Ireland's capital, we were welcomed by a giant sign reading "Our time, Our place, Belfast 2012". After 3 days I soon realised that this wasn't just a sign trying to make us tourists feel welcome...this was something a little more, a way of saying to the world 'hey, don't forget about us up here- we've got it all together now''. Before our trip to Northern Ireland, I admit we didn't really know a whole lot about the troubled past of the North. We knew that there had been ongoing religious troubles, but I for one had no idea that to this day Catholics and Protestants still have so much tension between them. And for this reason, Belfast isn't exactly the place that tourists are flocking to in droves. Yet we still managed to find a place that is interesting to see, and for the fact that it provided a base for us to explore the picturesque Giant's Causeway up in the very North, I'm glad we made the trip.

We ended up in Belfast more out of convenience than anything else really- it was the cheapest place we could fly to out of Amsterdam and we thought 'why not visit Ireland'. We soon learnt that this was NOT Ireland, and depending on who you were talking to, the two places could seem to be on opposite poles of the earth. For me, the distinction was a little bit fuzzy: on the one hand, North Ireland is still firmly under the control of the monarchy, and uses pounds (though their currency is different looking and can actually be legally refused in the rest of the UK- go figure); yet on the other hand, people from Northern Ireland are issued with two passports- British and Irish- and depending on which way their loyalties lie, can use whichever one they want. A taxi driver told us this was particularly useful in the Olympics- the Protestant athletes all exercised their Irish passports and joined the Irish team, while the Catholics all played the British card and joined team GB. So it wasn't until we moved to the actual Republic of Ireland that we actually got a true taste of Irish culture. Instead we experienced the culture of Belfast, and what an interesting one that is.

The city centre itself wasn't exactly the nicest out of all places we have been so far. Some travellers we later met were quite frank about their opinions of Belfast: "man, that place is grim". I wouldn't go as far as saying that, though it really did depend on what you doing and oddly enough, the weather. We arrived on a sunny day in the afternoon and went for a walk through the city. Our hostel, Lagan Backpackers, was about a half hours walk from the main part of town, and from there the main sights are really a big town hall and the rest of the main town is dominated by shopping streets. (They have a big shopping centre with a dome on it that also is a lookout, and it lights up at night, so here's what you could see from it when we climbed up it one day:).

Past the shopping district is what they call the 'Titanic Trail'- a walk along the harbourside to the docks and shipping area, where the ill-fated Titanic was actually built. Belfast seems to be very proud of this fact, so much so the they just finished building this multi-million dollar Titanic center on the harbour celebrating the marvel that was the Titanic...but Mike and I couldn't get past one fact- didn't the Titanic sink?

So while our walk that afternoon was nice and sunny along the harbourside, when the rains and grey skies came for the rest of the trip I could see where the word 'grim' came in. No more was this clear than in West Belfast, or what we liked to call 'the ghetto'. West Belfast is the very source of the Catholic vs Protestant battles in Ireland. We learnt early on that this wasn't the kind of place that tourists should just go wandering around in and so instead we took one of the infamous Black Cab Taxi Tours to discover the area with a local driver.

Our driver Pat took us and another Aussie couple (Josh & Kate) who we met at our hostel on a 1.5 hour tour of West Belfast, and what an experience that was. We went to the area that was shaped like a large rectangle, with streets running across the middle of it joining one side to the other so it kind of looks like rungs on a ladder. The area is full of political murals, and depending on what side you were on, the murals celebrated figures that have been instrumental to their cause. I was surprised to hear that even though the Troubles began in 1969, to this day the Catholic vs Protest divide is still a big issue in this part of the community. So much so that the British army erected big gates years ago that separate the two sides right down the middle. The gates are closed at nights and on weekends (aka the times when people are more likely to get drunk and stir up trouble) and so on the day when we visited there were these great big metal gates closing off the streets. And not just one, but TWO sets of gates... This was pretty serious stuff.

And the timing of our tour meant that it was a really raw time as well- just one week before we were there, a protestant prison guard was killed by the IRA, shot dead while driving on the motorway. The Catholics were after this man because apparently at the prisons, any catholic female that goes to visit her husband is force strip searched- a practice that is only carried out on the catholic women. So their response? Kill the guy. Our driver Pat, a bit biased towards the catholic side of the troubles, reasoned the killing by saying "well, he was warned: he shouldn't have been strip searching the women". After hearing that kind of 'logic' I could see how this tit-for-tat violence has gone on for so long, and has made a place like West Belfast what it is today.

Our tour started on Shankill Road, the Protestant side, and it was an area that definitely had a feel about it. My main feeling was 'thank god we didn't accidentally walk onto this side of town'. See this mural to get a bit of an idea- its a soldier pointimg his gun at you, and it's painted in such a way so that no matter where you walk, the barrel of the gun is always pointed straight at you. Crazy.

Our driver Pat told us some interesting stories about his time doing these tours, and how when he was on that side of town he would always give a fake name if anyone asked, just so they wouldn't work out that he is a catholic. He also was chuffed to tell us a story about how he drove Rhianna around when all the celebrities were in town for the MTV awards in 2011.. Apparently she was so moved by the stories that she wrote 'We Found Love In a Hopeless Place' based around West Belfast, and that he was even there when filming some of the video clip..

After later watching the video clip of the terrible song for signs of Pat, we soon realised that he probably didn't make the cut. And when you see the self-portrait he took on my camera, you might see why:

(Best mullet I've seen since leaving Australia!)

We then moved on over to the catholic side at Falls Road, and it definitely had a bit of a safer feel to the air. Either way though, I can't imagine how people live in this area. There is a huge big wall dividing the two halves, and yet on the catholic side people's houses are built right up until the wall. And just to be in the safe side so that the odd Molotov cocktail doesn't come crashing through the window, the houses have big cages built around their back patios.

It would feel like living in a zoo and yet Pat explained that for the people living in this area it is a great sense of pride. We got a real insider's point of view from the tour, and combined with the quirky Irish sense of humour and thick accent of our driver Pat, it really was a different experience. Here's just a taste of some of the murals of the area:

A touching tribute to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations:

And here's one more photo of what Mike has been getting up to over here:

(For the record mike hasnt actually joined the IRA, he was set up by Pat the driver here, and he told me that I could use this photo against mike if I ever needed to... Mwahaha).

Our time in Belfast wasn't all just doom and gloom in the troubled West Side. Here are a couple of highlights from the rest of our time in the city:

St George's Market
A big covered market, mainly full of food stalls and craft goods made by little Irish ladies. There was even someone playingan irish flute. I am beginning to develop a HUGE love for makets (even more so than before) for the opportunity to taste great 'street food' (or in the case of Belfast, cakes stalls straight from the kitchens of little old ladies). Yes please.

The Crown
A pub with the best character I have ever seen- it's an old style bar that has little wooden booths all through it, and so you basically get your own little private area with stained glass windows and a little door as well. We went for a beer with the Australian couple we shared the Black Taxi tour with and it had such a good little atmosphere. Here's a photo from the web, I forgot to take one but it's just so cool I wanted to show proof of it:

Maggie Mays
This little cafe was recommended to us by the taxi driver for the cheap food, and by people at the hostel for their amazing milkshakes. We were in heaven here:

We came to this place three times during our stay in Belfast. And when it turned out that we had to go back to Belfast after our Irish travels so we could catch the ferry over to Scotland, we were excited to have one more of their milkshakes.

GIANTS CAUSEWAY DAYTRIP
Without a doubt my favourite part of Northern Ireland was our daytrip up to the very north tip to see the Giants Causeway. For £17.50 we joined a full day tour with McCombs that took us to a castle, the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, Bushmills Whiskey Distillery and then to the actual causeway itself. The driver had a classic Irish sense of humour (at one point he even drove us past a golf course and told an elaborate story about the dress code they require, including the fact they had to wear 2 pairs of socks.... He then got us with the classic 'in case they get a hole in one' line. What a guy).

The rope bridge was one of those perfectly timed moments where we experienced four seasons in about the space of 30 minutes- when we first arrived there was even a rainbow over the headland:

Then the weather changed, and it actually started hailing. That made us walk the kilometre down to the ropebridge a little quicker, that's for sure. But it was worth it in the end:

As for the causeway, that was something really cool to see. Mike was probably in geologists' heaven, trying to work out what processes caused the rocks to look the way they do. For me I was just really impressed by the sight and enjoyed climbing over the rocks. The Giants Causeway actually has some mythical story behind it involving giants, which made it even better.

The short version is this: there were two giants- the Irish giant Finn McCool, and a Scottish giant Fingal. One day the Scottish giant hurled insults at Finn across the channel which enraged Finn, so he picked up a big piece of earth and threw it across the channel. Fingal retaliated with a rock thrown back at Finn and shouted that Finn was lucky that he wasn't a strong swimmer or he would have made sure he could never fight again.

Finn was enraged and began lifting huge clumps of earth from the shore, throwing them so as to make a pathway for the Scottish giant to come and face him. However by the time he finished making the crossing he had not slept for a week and so instead devised a cunning plan to fool the Scot.

Finn diguised himself as a baby in a cot and when his adversary came to face him Finn's wife told the Giant that Finn was away but showed him his son sleeping in the cradle. This scared the Scottish giant as he thought 'if that is the size of Finn McCool's baby, i'd hate to see the size of Finn McCool!'.

In his haste to escape Fingal sped back along the causeway Finn had built, tearing it up as he went. What remains is the Giants Causeway of today which we saw, so here's some pictures that tried to capture that:

Our time in Northern Ireland was really great, if for no other reason than we didn't have any expectations before we got there. But it wasn't until we got to Dublin that we got to see what real Irish culture is like, so I will save that for next time.