Northern Ireland

This weekend was full of photographs as we travelled by bus from Galway to Dublin, then again by bus to Belfast where we spent the day on saturday, July 12th.

Now, if we had read our guide book thoroughly prior to going to Northern Ireland, perhaps we would have read this: "Tourists in Northern Ireland are no longer considered courageous.  A united nations study conudcted in 2003 found that northern ireland was statistically the second safest place in the developed world (after Japan)."  - Ok sounds good right... 

We continue reading: "Tourists notice tension mainly during marching season.  July 12th "the twelfth" is traditionally the most confrontational day of the year in the north, when proud Protestant Unionist Orangemen march to celebrate their Britishness and separate identity from the Republic of Ireland.  LAY LOW IF YOU STUMBLE ONTO ANY BIG ORANGE PARADES".

Upon first arrival to the city we notice that every single thing is closed, on a saturday.  I mean EVERYTHING.  There are alot of confused looking tourists and a mass amount of cops out with flak jackets on.  So we proceeded to walk around as swat teams drove by and take pictures.

A statue at the entrance to the city:

This sign was clearly not followed later in the day, but for now no one was out.

They had a massive state of the art ferris wheel in town.  It had AC, a guided tour, even a VIP car with champagne.  Some beautiful views of Belfast from the top of it:

We found an awesome french restaurant at one of the ritzy hotels in town, being the only place we saw open to eat.  As we left it to head home there were clearly far more people in the streets now, most drinking or had been drinking for quite some time.  As we got a block from our hotel we heard the sound of drums and flutes.  We decided to go see the parade that was happening off in the distance, and we stumbled upon the parade of the Orangemen:

The parade was about a mile long of non-stop lodges of orangemen (most of the older guys clearly had seen harder days and were well tattooed), who were followed by tons of people partying and wrapped in the Union Jack, or Ulster flags.  But with them also were bands of children or even women:

This flag is that of Ulster, which is basically northern ireland.  Legend has it when 2 chiefs were racing to this land on boat, the first to set his hand upon shore would have the right to the land.  Both were close to the shore, and the losing chief saw he was going to lose, he took his sword and sliced off his hand and threw it to shore claiming the land.

The news when we got home was all about the parades that day, and there was some problem with arson going on but otherwise it was actually a pretty fun & peaceful day for us at least.  For the catholics in northern ireland, probably a bit tense.  The next day we left Belfast early in the morning to take a tour of various northern places.  Our fist stop was on the northern coast where you can see across the ocean to scotland.  We walked a rope bridge to an island and saw this cove:

Cliffs of limestone:

I felt like i was on the set of LOST.  This was in fact giants causeway, our second stop on the tour.  Lava shot up from the earth long ago and formed this really bizarre hexagon column pattern in the ground.  At one time this was a land bridge to scotland.

A view of the dried lava from the top, it really looks like it was cut to be shaped like this:

Giant's causeway from afar:

An old castle near Portrush.

Now, what we had seen up until now was the loyalists to the king as is the case in most of the north.  However in Derry, things are different.  The city in itself is interesting because it still has walls up around city centre from the 1600's, which we toured.  They talked about how catholics could only come into these walls until 9pm, the bells would toll and then it became protestant only.  The catholics would then retreat to the bogside of town, a side where the river which once ran around town forming an island, stopped and now was a boggy area.  I'm not sure what thoughts you might have on the IRA, but whatever they might be it is probably a changing event to walk into the west side of Derry.  You know without doubt when you arrive because of all the murals.

Free from english rule, here the IRA defended the catholics from nightly seiges of property and brutal english police attacks.

Bloody Sunday:  14 catholic protesters killed here.