Easter in Belfast

On Easter Sunday we signed up for a tour driving us around the Murals. We had asked at the tourist information place about how to get there and they told us it was "too dangerous" and we must do it on a tour. I'm still wondering if they got a kick back for sign ups... Anyway so we signed up for this tour which took us around in a mini-van, the guide was local which was great, cause not only did I get to giggle at his accent but he had many a story for us. Unfortunately we were the only non UK people on the mini-bus so most of his stories went completely over our heads. We stopped asking who such and such was quite quickly and just let it all wash over.

Coast

We stopped at the oddly named peace wall, a wall (obviously) that divides the Protestants and Catholics from each other. Now not only are Adrian and I doing our bit for Australian/Kiwi relations, but we are also working on the Catholic/Protestant divide too. So we stood at this wall and at the bottom it's a concrete wall. The guide told us that's where the wall started. I would guess the concrete was about 2m high, but that wasn't enough. So they added cladding (I think that's what its called, anyway a kind of fence that you cant see through) to the top of the concrete, but still people were throwing things over and it just wasn't enough. So on the top of the cladding, on top of the concrete, is a fence. The fence was high enough and they stopped there. They still don't think its safe to pull it down, just in case, and the driver said he didn't believe it would come down in his lifetime. The concrete wall is signed by many people including Bono but I couldn't find his signature.

Giants Causeway

Belfast is also where the Titanic was built. We saw the dry dock where it was built, it is about as enthralling as that sounds, and was much smaller than I would have thought. There was also an exhibition at the (lovely) town hall on the titanic while we were there, some weird guy kept following me around and trying to talk to me about it all. He loves Titanic (the movie). He loves Celine Deon (it was at this point I tagged him "weird") and listens to "my heart will go on" all the time, it was playing in the room as well, so he could listen to it again. He was from Turkey and excitedly pointed out to me some tiles in a picture that came from Turkey.

Mural

Belfast used to be heavily involved in ship building and repair. Not being such a use for that anymore the shipyards have closed down, I think one was still open? This leaves a lot of empty space, so they are redeveloping Belfast. One new thing is a giant centre, movie theatre and bars, with a giant science museum. The museum had a lie detector and Adrian failed such basic tests as "am I cute" so we moved quickly away from that.

One thing we learnt in Belfast is they have daylight savings also. We knew time was changing over in London, so we asked the night guard at our accommodations did we need to change our clock. No he says, that's not for two weeks. The next morning Anita rang me, lucky because the only way we could tell the time was when I checked my voicemail it said 10.00, not 9.00 which is what we thought. So a dash out the door and no breakfast, in my bag there was a stack of chocolate, so for an Easter Sunday breakfast, we ate chocolate.

Peace Wall

Check:

One very nearly missed bus

Rope Bridge

Science