Belfast

We made our way up to Belfast a little while ago, the capital of Northern Ireland. Honestly when we got off the bus after the 3 hour ride, it felt like we drove to England. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, completely detatched from the Republic of Ireland, and it definitely looks that way as well. The city is organized in blocks instead of rambling roads, and the buildings looks straight out of london, complete with those adorable telephone booths :)

We had a personal tour of the parliament buildings, the main one being Storemont, essentially Northern Ireland's House of Parliament. This building was HUGE, and sat on top of an enormous hill looking over the city. During World War II, it was essentially the largest target for bombing, being a giant white government building easily seen from the skies at night, so, for the duration of the war, the entire building was covered in manure. I would not have liked to work there then.

It was really interesting, we toured the chambers where the two sides of parliament meet, and even got to sit in their seats.

After the tour, we had a delicious catered lunch upstairs on the top floor overlooking the grounds. I was in the bathroom when everyone left, so when me and my friends went back to the dining room, it was empty except for a waitor, who allowed us to climb out a window onto a windowsill. What a guy.

After Stormont, we headed over to the Titanic Quarter, home of the shipyard belonging to Harland and Wolfe, the company that built the Titanic. This was really cool, since they were celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the departure/sinking of the Titanic. MTV had a concert on the slipway that led up to the Titanic, mostly European pop stars, pretty sure the only American was Sean Paul. The museum dedicated to the Titanic was so cool, from the outside it is designed to look like an iceberg, and each of its top corners is the exact height of the ship.

Belfast used to be an extremely important industrial city but for obvious reasons that has waned in the past 50 years, due to some pretty dramatic social turmoil. There are two main neighborhoods in Belfast, the Catholic one (The Falls) and the Protestant one (The Shankhill). It is very blatant that there is still quite a bit of tension in the city as well as Northern Ireland itself. And for that reason, the giant peace walls that separate the two sides of the city are still up and will be for some time to come.

All over both sides of the city, there are wall murals, constantly being put up and taken down, depicting everything from the troubles to debates over Cuba. There are too many murals to count and too many stories to be told about this city but I got a much better sense of what daily life was like for people living among violence for several decades.

The group was decently exhausted by this point and it was time to sit down to a wonderful 3 course meal, and hit the road back home.