Northern Ireland - Belfast

Belfast -

Now why on earth did it take me so long to get to Belfast? I lived in the UK for three years, for crying out loud.  But I finally made it, and it is a lovely little city.  I would call this a perfect sized place, plenty of restaurants, shopping.  Not sure about the night life, but then those days are pretty much done for me!

Stayed at a great little place in Belfast called The Gregory.  About a 15 minute walk to downtown activities, or of course an easy taxi ride away.

Our first day we booked a Black Cab tour with Paddy Campbell's.  Our driver took us to the main areas where the 30-year conflict, called the Troubles, occurred.  We first drove to the Protestant side of the giant wall, dividing the two sectarian groups.  The driver explained things in a fairly unbiased manner. While people refer to the Catholic and the Protestant areas/neighborhoods, as I understood it, the conflict is more along political divides.  The Loyalists, who supported the English take-over of Northern Ireland, and the Republicans, who would like to see Northern Ireland reunited with Ireland.  Further complicated by what basically sounded like racketeering by both groups, who built a lucrative trade collecting "protection" money from local businesses.

Our first view of the divide--we were in front of the Anglican church and the street just sort of dead ended into this wall.

While we were out snapping photos, the Anglican priest came out and invited us to come have a look around inside his church.  He was lovely and told us some of the history of his church.

Rev. Jack Lamb of the Townsend Street Presbyterian Church

William of Orange, Protestant King of England.  In the background, the Clonmore Cathedral on the Catholic side.

A memorial on the Protestant side, to a militia man who killed many Catholics after the peace agreements.  The driver told me he had been found dead of suspicious causes, possibly killed MI-5.  Live by the sword, die by the sword...

Next, we drove by the 40 foot wall separating the homes on both sides and viewed some of the murals on the Peace Wall.  Parallels were drawn with various oppressed groups around the world--Palestinians, Kurds, and African Americans.

When I set out on this little tour, I imagined it would be an interesting view of some recent history that I recall hearing about on the news as I was growing up and as a young adult.  I was not prepared for how profoundly sad I would feel seeing the memorials to those killed in this conflict.  Seeing homes with cages on the back windows to prevent gasoline bombs from being thrown in, seeing the pictures of the victims, and the mural of Bobby Sands was especially poignant.

Clonard Gardens memorial; wall and cages on houses visible in background

Clonard Monastery, where Bill Clinton came to broker the peace agreement.

Bobby Sands mural.  I remember hearing about his hunger strike on the news each night--a grueling 66 days before he died.

One interesting thing about the Catholic, or Loyalist side is that the streets are named after places the British have "colonized".  We saw a Sevastopol, Bombay, and Kashmir streets.  And with this being the 100 year anniversary of the 1916  Easter Uprising, Irish flags were everywhere.  I highly recommend taking this tour as a step towards understanding the Troubles and what happened in Northern Ireland in our recent past.