Northern Ireland Part II: Belfast

The second part of our trip to Northern Ireland we were in Belfast. We were a little nervous going there because we had heard about some rioting in the weeks preceding our visit. There was rioting because Protestants and Catholics hold parades throughout the year and they sing songs and march in each other’s areas. A parade commission was started so that they could regulate where people marched and they wouldn’t be marching in each other’s residential regions. Some people decided that they weren’t going to follow these regulations and that is what caused a stir in Belfast. Jacquie assured us that we were staying in a safe area though and we wouldn’t have any trouble. Our hostel was near Queen’s University so there were lots of students out at night. It was Fresher’s Week, which is where all the students come back to school, and the freshmen have their first week of college so it was fun.

On Saturday we had a guided bus tour of Belfast and we learned about The Troubles there too. A lot of the information was similar but we went through different parts of the city that were segregated by high walls. The walls were high enough so that you wouldn’t be able to throw anything from one side to the next. Our tour guide told us that they did a survey on both sides asking if people wanted the walls down and about 20% said definitely take them down, 20% said absolutely not keep them up, and the rest said they should be taken down but that they weren’t ready for them to be down yet and to wait. In my lifetime, I have learned about segregation but I have never seen it so clearly as it was in Northern Ireland.

Later that day we went to the brand new Titanic Experience. The Titanic was built in Belfast and it is one of the reasons that the city grew and maintained its workforce. We went through its building, sinking, and discovery. Since its new, it was very busy but it was a really cool museum. It had tons of interactive components; my favorite part was looking down into a glass floor and seeing a virtual video of the Titanic in the ocean!

            This has been my favorite excursion so far; I learned a lot about the politics of Northern Ireland and I also got to see a bunch of amazing sites!

            

Killarney, Ring of Kerry, and Cliffs of Moher

This weekend we went on a long excursion from Thursday until Sunday. We left the Park Lodge early Thursday morning and headed to Killarney which is south of Galway about two hours. First we went to Ross castle, a 16^th century castle that has been restored so that visitors can see what the castle would have looked like and how they would have lived back then. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the inside but the castle was totally equipped for battle. The people who would have lived in the castle when it was built would have been constantly fighting with others in the surrounding area, mostly for cattle. The doors were built with the wood planks going horizontally on one side and then vertically on the other so that people couldn’t chop them down with an ax. They also had spikes coming out of them so you couldn’t run into the door and knock it down. From the second story there were holes in the floor where defenders could throw boiling water down to the front door and other things to fight attackers off. The stairs were also different heights so that people running up them would be unfamiliar with them and trip. The stairs were also in a spiral that wound upward to the right so that if two people were having a swordfight, the person on the higher steps would be free to swing his sword in his right hand while the attacker would be swinging into the railing and the stairs above. The doorways were incredibly short and this was so a person would hit their head if they were rushing in to conquer the castle tower. All of these things indicate how much fighting was going on during that time.

Ross Castle

We stayed at Neptunes Hostel in Killarney which we liked much better than the Jamaica Inn. They were really clean and the showers were hot! The next day we went to Muckross House, which was one of my favorite things we did all weekend. It’s a Victorian mansion built as a wedding gift by William Burn. It was also visited by queen Victoria in 1851 and later sold to Arthur Guinness and later given to the state. We toured the inside of the castle but again, we couldn’t take any pictures. It was an amazing house with a ton of rooms, high ceilings, beautiful furniture, bells for the servants, and incredible views.  

Muckross House

Muckross House's back yard!

After this we toured the Ring of Kerry, stopping along the way to take pictures and also to visit the Skellig Experience. The Skellig Islands are two islands off the coast that were once inhabited by a huge monastery for 600 years.

Ring of Kerry

Saturday we went to the Kerry County Museum where there was a tour of medieval Kerry that included the sights, sounds and awful smells of the time period. We then drove along the Dingle Peninsula. The road was up high on a cliff and our bus driver, Gerald, nicked the side of a vehicle in one tight spot. We weren’t sure we were going to make it through the tight corner and were kind of worried we were about to plummet into the ocean but Gerry, being an incredibly skilled driver, got us through and to the Blasket Center where we learned about the Blasket Islands and the people who lived there. On the island they only spoke Irish and writers, poets, and linguists came to the island to learn about their unique way of life and to hear the lost language.

That night we went the National Theater of Ireland where we viewed the play, Clann Lir. It was entirely in Irish but from reading the description we knew what was going on. All the people there besides our group and Kathy and Judy had grey hair but it was actually really cool. There was traditional Irish dancing and the story is an Irish legend!

Sunday we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which is one of the top tourist attractions in Ireland. It is also the spot that a scene from Harry Potter was shot! We went out on a boat into the sea and I was 90% sure we were going to tip over and topple into the ocean but we managed to see the cliffs which were AWESOME! Then we went up to the top of the cliffs and got to view them from there as well!

I had a great weekend touring County Kerry and on Wednesday we head to Northern Ireland for another long weekend!