A short trip to Belfast!

My first trip to Northern Ireland come after I wanted to do something different during my weekends. As luck would have it, I came across an advertisement for a one-day excursion to Belfast with the “Paddywagons” and jumped on the opportunity thinking that even if I don’t see it all in one day, I can always return as there as daily buses between Dublin and Belfast.

The tour started at the monastery of Monasterboice, one of the oldest monastic settlements in Ireland and well known for it’s collection of Irish High Crosses which are decorated with scenes from the bible and also contain Celtic knotwork. An interesting site to see I’m sure, but I sort of thought that this was an unnecessary detour when Belfast is the advertisement. 

Upon our arrival in Belfast, we were directed into four separate vehicles, the Belfast Black Cabs, which do tours of different parts of the city. We choose to do a tour that concentrates mainly on the political aspects to Belfast’s troubled history. This tour took us through the Protestant part of the town, were we were shown numerous murals. These murals showed political messages that usually are put up on houses to commemorate some historical or political event.

We got to get out of the cabs to take pictures and have a bit of walk in the area, after getting an explanation on the murals. It felt a little weird to be in the middle of a resident area snapping away with the camera. I wonder what the people that live there thinks, the cab driver was saying that they don’t mind that at all and think it’s fun, I wonder if that’s really what they think. After the protestant murals it was time to explore the Catholic area where we saw fewer murals. But we did get to see Sinn Feins main office, which is the main political party for uniting the country.

Most of the city’s neighbourhoods are separated along religious lines and there are certain ares that have a literal wall to separate them. These walls are about 10 metres high and are called “peace-lines”. Our cab driver took us to these walls where we got to see the inscriptions written by many people before us and with most of the messages being about peace. We also were informed of its dark history and were informed of different attacks that happened along them.

After the tour we had some spare time to walk around in the city centre where I came across landmarks such as the Crown Liquor Saloon, the most famous bar in Northern Ireland, it survived no less than 42 bombs during the troubles. It’s located opposite the Europa hotel which is the most bombed hotel in the world.

On the way back the bus took a detour through a town called Drogheda where we got to go into the cathedral and look at the severed head of of St. Oliver Plunkett who was executed 1681. Another interesting location for this tour, on particular to end the trip this way.

The black cab tours were great and provided a lot of the information behind the troubles in Belfast history. The rest of the city, well my overall impression was that it felt, well a bit dark and depressing and whilst I’m happy that I travel here and saw it, I don’t think that I’ll make an effort to revisit the city in the future.