Having a blast in Belfast (no pun intended)

We arrived in Belfast late on Friday night to a howling gale and torrential rain. Not the best introduction to the city where the Titanic was born!
We hopped on the bus into town and found our hotel that was right in the city centre. The hotel was a little average, especially the shower, but it was late, we were tired and we just crashed into a blissful sleep.

Saturday

We were booked on a day tour out to see some of the natural beauty on the outskirts of Belfast city, so had an early start. The complimentary hotel breakfast was slightly average.... powdered scrambled egg and fake sausages…mmm. However Lou discovered a newfound love of Irish soda bread.

After a short walk to the Europa Hotel, we found our tour bus and set off to the first stop of Carrickfergus, which is a wicked castle on harbour. It is one of the best preserved examples of Norman fortresses and was also the place where King William III first set foot in Ireland in 1690. This was the guy that forced all the Irish to be protestant which set the scene for all “the troubles” that occurred in Northern Ireland almost 400 years later. 

We had a bit of an annoying bus driver who treated us like naughty school children and repeated his rules about 400 times but he seemed fairly knowledgeable. We passed through the coastal road up to our next stop – the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. This is a wee rope bridge connecting the mainland to a tiny island about 30 metres away. It is thought salmon fishermen have been building bridges to the island for over 350 years. It was a wild and windy day but it added to the excitement and there was some stunning scenery. 

Lunch was up next at the Bushmill distillery, which is believed to be the oldest distillery in the world. We feasted on Irish stew and hot toddy's along with a taster of 12 year old single malt that just about brought tears to Hamish's eyes. We even found this article on Munster beating the mighty All Blacks! 

The rain had just started when we reached our final destination of the Giant's Causeway. This is a total 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is such a cool natural wonder, especially on a wet and windy day.

So the story goes that the Irish giant Finn MacCool was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. Finn accepted the challenge and built the causeway across the North Channel so that the two giants could meet. Finn hides from Benandonner when he realises that his foe is much bigger than him. Finn's wife disguises Finn as a baby and tucks him in a cradle. When Benandonner sees the size of the 'baby', he reckons that its father, Finn, must be a giant among giants. He flees back to Scotland in fright, destroying the causeway behind him so that Finn could not follow. Weird Irish folklore for you!

We set out on the long track which goes up over the mountains and then down to the rocks. The waves were really impressive!

We bundled back into the bus and headed back to Belfast, after a quick photo stop at Ballylough castle. The tour ended just outside the Crown Liquor Saloon, one of the most famous pubs in Belfast and an outstanding example of a Victorian gin palace. So we decided to have a few drinks there before dinner. Be rude not to have Guinness in Ireland! It was amazing to see how many people were drinking straight whiskey, bearing in mind it was about 6pm.

Lou had made dinner reservations at this barge moored in the Belfast harbour. We had a fantastic meal there, all local produce including the locally brewed beer called Smash. One of the more memorable dinners we have had out.

 

Highlight: The spectacular scenery and dinner, all very much unexpected.

Lowlight: The shower 'pressure', and the fact that our hotel was serving beers to very drunk men when we went to breakfast!

Interesting fact #1: A licence to distil in the area was granted to Sir Thomas Phillipps of the Bushmills Distillery in 1608 by King James I, and that licence is still in use today.

Interesting fact #2: The Europa hotel (just down the road from where we were staying) is the most bombed hotel in the world after having suffered 28 bomb attacks during the Troubles. This is because it used to be the main hotel were politicians, journalists and dignitaries from England stayed.



Sunday

A bit of a sleep in and some viewing of the Winter Olympics before breakfast, we were both slightly worse for wear from the night before but nothing some soda bread couldn't fix.

Hamish had booked another tour for us this morning, known as the Black cab tour where taxi drivers take people on a tour of the more notorious sights of Belfast, including all the murals on buildings showing support for either the Catholic or Protestant side.

Our guide was so interesting, he was just a normal guy who grew up during the worst of the protests and terrorism and told it like it was. We saw some really disturbing things, like the locked gates that separate certain roads in the city, one side being Protestant and one side being Catholic. We drove around the murals on the buildings and stopped at various points and Tom (our guide) would explain more about the history of the IRA and the UFF etc. Over 4,000 people were killed during the 30 years of conflict between the 1960's and 1998. It's still bizarre to think that all this hatred and conflict still exists in a city that you think it relatively sophisticated. And all this has been going on for 400 years!

One of the walls separating two roads

Memorial mural

Cages around the houses to protect them from firebombs

We finished our tour around lunchtime and opted to go to a pub for an Irish coffee and reflect on what we had seen, it was a very confronting thing to witness. We then wondered up the top of the Victoria Square shopping centre to have a look over the city in their viewing platform which was cool.

We wandered round the impressive city hall building which had a memorial garden for the Titanic disaster and then the St. George's indoor market which was a great variety of wee shops and food stalls. We treated ourselves to freshly caught scampi for lunch and then continued on a stroll along the river up to the docks where they built the famous Titanic. 

We were pretty exhausted by this stage so we called it a day and headed to the airport or our short flight back to London. We were so impressed with Belfast, highly recommend it!

Highlight: Definitely the tour, worth every penny.

Lowlight: Getting home…stupid southwest trains

Interesting fact #1: Out of the 3,000 people killed, almost 2,000 were civilians showing how much the conflict didn't make sense to many communities.

Interesting fact #2: Our tour guide was semi famous having talked to Ross Kemp in Extreme World show for Sky