Belfast

I've been in Ireland for a week now. I first arrived in Belfast last Tuesday night, and made my way to the youth hostel. I had a nice small 4 bed female dorm, which was nice after the 8 bed mixed dorm in Edinburgh. The hostel was near the university area, so I wandered around near Belfast's Queen's University. The university has some of the most beautiful architecture that I've seen, which looks really amazing at night (I got a great picture of it). The next day I decided to be a real tourist and bought a ticket for the hop on hop off tour. I decided the best view would be from the top of the bus, which it was, but even though it was a sunny day, it was a mighty cold trip. The tour went all through Belfast, showing the major sites like the Stormont Parliament Buildings, the city hall, and the many murals. The city has had a troubled history, with a considerable amount of violence over the last 40 years. It is only in the last 10 years that peace has come to the city and it is now booming, and is very tourist friendly. It is still part of Britain, and seperate from the Republic of Ireland in the South. However, signs of the "Troubles", as they call them, are still evident everywhere, from the murals, to the security cameras everywhere, to the "Peace Wall". I enjoyed my tour but it took me a while to thaw out afterwards.

I looked around for a bit then decided to go on a walking tour of Belfast, to see the city from a different perspective. We had a wonderful guide named Billy, who took us all around the city. He told us quite a bit of the early history of Ireland, and I got some great pictures of some of the sights I'd missed on the bus. After that, I came back to the hostel and revelled in having a private room for the night. The next morning, I packed up and headed for a bus to Dublin.

The weather in Belfast was good, cool fall weather but with lots of sunny patches. It was a lot like Scotland in that it was very changeable. It started to rain on the walking tour but by the time, I'd managed to get the umbrella out of the bag, it had stopped. So far, I haven't tried much Irish food, except for the soda bread (or wheaten), which is wonderful.