Lesah and James, my son Steve's wife and baby, are in Canada visiting her family, so Steve and I spent the long Memorial Day weekend exploring the northeast corner of Northern Ireland! Our first stop was the city of Belfast, which is home to a recently completed museum dedicated to the building and sinking of the Titanic,which was made in the shipyards of Belfast over a century ago. Belfast was also the scene of extreme atrocities during the "troubles" between the Irish Catholics and the Irish and English Protestants.
Belfast city is a pretty city. And they seem to really like to have colorful paintings on the sides of their buildings. We noticed that their houses also have an enclosed entrance way built on them. Something we haven't seen in the Republic of Ireland.
Steve and I share a common disinterest in focusing simply on the regular tourist spots, so we forgo the visit to the Titanic museum (which takes 4 to 6 hours to fully appreciate) and instead visited St. George's Market, a farmer's market and crafts fair that has been in operation since 1604! They sold vegetables and fruits, fresh and organic meat, paintings and photographs, jewelry and a wide variety of arts and crafts. They also had live music and a variety of food stalls. After a great lunch there, we signed on for what they call the "black cab tour".
On these tours you are driven around the parts of the city that saw the worst of the "troubles" from the 1960s until the early 2000's. Sadly, our taxi, although black, was covered with advertising.
Our driver, Brendan, was born and raised in the Catholic part of town and experienced the events that took place there. He tried to be impartial as he told the stories of those times, but it is hard to bury the memories and emotions of those times.
He first took us to the Shankill Road area in West Belfast, the Protestant part of the city. The area is the home of numerous murals, that pay tribute to the heroes of the unionist organizations that fought to remain part of the United Kingdom, painted on the sides of buildings.
The man in this picture was called "Topgun" because he killed more Catholic militants and innocent victims than anyone else at the time. He died in 2004 from a drug overdose.
Brendan then showed us the Falls Road area of the city, which was the Catholic neighborhood he grew up in. He told us of stories from the late 1960's when the Protestant militants would come into the Catholic neighborhoods to attack not only the IRA militants, but to attack innocent victims. Of course the IRA did similar things in Shankill as well. The violence was so horrific that a wall was built around the Catholic area to keep the two populations separate. Not only does the wall still stand, but access to the Catholic neighborhood is still controlled by gates like this one in the wall. There is never a time when all the gates are locked, but they vary which gates are locked at any particular time; and in the evenings, all but one gate are locked. The wall was built in 1969 and there are no immediate plans to remove it.
In bringing the tour to an end, Brendan emphasized that things are much improved since 1998 when the Good Friday Accord was signed. There is a sense that the citizens of Northern Ireland are "living the dream" now, with a prospering economy and opportunities that weren't there before 1998. While there are still pockets of radicals on both sides, there is a peace, albeit a fragile one, that has given the country hope.
After our tour of Belfast, we headed out of town a ways to our accommodation for the night - Bay Cottage Bed and Breakfast on the shore of Lough (pronounced lock, meaning lake) Neagh. Our hostess Elizabeth was wonderful! This was the type of B and B that I remembered from our time living in Ireland in 1985-86, where we slept in a room in one area of the house and the owners lived in another part of the house. Elizabeth provided a fantastic cooked-to-order breakfast including sausages, bacon, smoked salmon, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, marmalade, chutney, fruit compote, fresh, homemade breads and more!
After we got settled into our room, we headed into the nearby town of Antrim to enjoy a peaceful walk through the woods by the lake.
That was followed by a yummy fish n' chips dinner and a very peaceful night's sleep. Stay tuned for days 2 and 3 of our great weekend get-away, including an interesting trip to the house we lived in 30 years ago when we moved to Ireland for a short time!
Belfast city is a pretty city. And they seem to really like to have colorful paintings on the sides of their buildings. We noticed that their houses also have an enclosed entrance way built on them. Something we haven't seen in the Republic of Ireland.
Steve and I share a common disinterest in focusing simply on the regular tourist spots, so we forgo the visit to the Titanic museum (which takes 4 to 6 hours to fully appreciate) and instead visited St. George's Market, a farmer's market and crafts fair that has been in operation since 1604! They sold vegetables and fruits, fresh and organic meat, paintings and photographs, jewelry and a wide variety of arts and crafts. They also had live music and a variety of food stalls. After a great lunch there, we signed on for what they call the "black cab tour".
On these tours you are driven around the parts of the city that saw the worst of the "troubles" from the 1960s until the early 2000's. Sadly, our taxi, although black, was covered with advertising.
Our driver, Brendan, was born and raised in the Catholic part of town and experienced the events that took place there. He tried to be impartial as he told the stories of those times, but it is hard to bury the memories and emotions of those times.
He first took us to the Shankill Road area in West Belfast, the Protestant part of the city. The area is the home of numerous murals, that pay tribute to the heroes of the unionist organizations that fought to remain part of the United Kingdom, painted on the sides of buildings.
The man in this picture was called "Topgun" because he killed more Catholic militants and innocent victims than anyone else at the time. He died in 2004 from a drug overdose.
Brendan then showed us the Falls Road area of the city, which was the Catholic neighborhood he grew up in. He told us of stories from the late 1960's when the Protestant militants would come into the Catholic neighborhoods to attack not only the IRA militants, but to attack innocent victims. Of course the IRA did similar things in Shankill as well. The violence was so horrific that a wall was built around the Catholic area to keep the two populations separate. Not only does the wall still stand, but access to the Catholic neighborhood is still controlled by gates like this one in the wall. There is never a time when all the gates are locked, but they vary which gates are locked at any particular time; and in the evenings, all but one gate are locked. The wall was built in 1969 and there are no immediate plans to remove it.
After our tour of Belfast, we headed out of town a ways to our accommodation for the night - Bay Cottage Bed and Breakfast on the shore of Lough (pronounced lock, meaning lake) Neagh. Our hostess Elizabeth was wonderful! This was the type of B and B that I remembered from our time living in Ireland in 1985-86, where we slept in a room in one area of the house and the owners lived in another part of the house. Elizabeth provided a fantastic cooked-to-order breakfast including sausages, bacon, smoked salmon, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, marmalade, chutney, fruit compote, fresh, homemade breads and more!
After we got settled into our room, we headed into the nearby town of Antrim to enjoy a peaceful walk through the woods by the lake.
That was followed by a yummy fish n' chips dinner and a very peaceful night's sleep. Stay tuned for days 2 and 3 of our great weekend get-away, including an interesting trip to the house we lived in 30 years ago when we moved to Ireland for a short time!
