Ireland day 3: Belfast

We boarded a train at Connolly station at around 9 am in Dublin en route to Belfast. The trip was quite scenic and I enjoyed it. The group of American and Canadian college students were a pretty entertaining contrast to Noah and I who were sitting quietly reading guide books and novels. The best part was probably that the American girl with them was from southern Illinois and gave a long diatribe on how she really hated Chicago even though she'd never been there. This was grandest about 10 minutes later when while chatting with me I told her that I went to UChicago. At this point she twisted her face a bit and her friends chuckled.

The train was also delayed for 45 minutes while we waited for an engineer to drive in from a few towns over to check a bridge that had seemingly been struck by a car. The Irish Rail people were constantly assuring us that we'd be fine and that "they were just trying to get home also" but regardless we arrived in Belfast.

After dropping our stuff at the hostel we found a walking tour at the Belfast tourist center. It became quite quickly evident that Noah and I would be the only people on the walking tour. Our guide was this motherly old woman from Belfast who was absolutely excellent and toured us all over the city.

Belfast, like seemingly everywhere else in Ireland, was beautiful.

I liked this public square a lot. Especially the statue. Across the way is the modern art museum. We actually came back to this square to listen to some guys play guitar later that evening. 

Still not sure of the actual importance of this fish but it was impressive.

This was the old Customs House that now since the advent of the European Union doesn't really get used. 

This tile map sort of depicts where we were throughout the walk. Most of the walking tour focused on the older history of Belfast. It was interesting to hear about how the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion sent many people from Belfast to the United States because of my own Scots Irish heritage. 

After that very happy and nice tour we went back to the hostel where our exceptionally excited hostel director Gerard set us up with a Black Taxi tour of West Belfast. We rode along in a taxi with another girl from the hostel while a taxi driver who had grown up in Catholic West Belfast during The Troubles took us around and talked about the history of the Protestant and Catholic tensions in Belfast.  

This is the 'peace wall' which separates Catholic and Protestant West Belfast.

These are Republican (Catholic) murals in West Belfast that depict various parts of the Troubles

Noah and I in front of part of the Peace Wall on the Protestant side

After we got back from the Black Taxi Tour (which was really informative and interesting) we ended up going out to a Burrito place (think Irish Chipotle) because the guy running the hostel was extremely adamant that it "get it done" and we were pretty interested in what an Irish burrito place would be. The only thing that was really interesting about it was that the line was backed up out the door with excited Irish folks. The burrito was exceptionally mediocre so we walked downtown. 

It was Culture Night in Belfast so we hit J. Hewitt's pub for some good live music and a Belfast Lager before we wandered outside only to be enveloped in a crazy street parade. Then we ended  up watching two guys play guitar outside for a while before eventually making our way to the Crown Bar( which was a beautiful Victorian bar with gorgeous stained glass and wood carvings. Noah and I were feeling pretty hard hit on our bar bills by now because of how expensive just one pint is so we split a beer and enjoyed the scenery before walking back to the hostel.