Belfast, Northern Ireland
It was a rainy, dreary day in Northern Ireland when we arrived at port in Belfast. As such, getting any photos of things we saw from the bus was pretty much a lost cause. This pic of the Titanic Museum was pretty much the only thing that was salvageable:
Titanic was built in the shipyards of Belfast right next to this museum. I asked our guide Adrian if it wasn’t a bit ironic that the building put up to celebrate the ship was shaped like the iceberg that caused it to sink. He said he didn’t think it looked like an iceberg. Um… ok.
The vast majority of the guide’s introduction to Belfast was a history lesson on the internal conflicts from hundreds of years ago right up to the present day. While there are no longer British troops marching up and down the streets, it hasn’t been that long ago that there were. What’s left is the poorly-named “Peace Wall” that has been erected to separate the Catholics from the Protestants.
Now, while every report I’ve ever heard about the conflicts here refer to it as a clash between the Catholics and the Protestants (and that’s not untrue), there’s a lot more to it than that. Irish natives were almost 100% Catholic. When England needed to secure Ireland as part of the United Kingdom for military reasons, they shipped in thousands of Scots and Brits, ousted the native Irish, then gave the land to the new settlers. Almost all of those settlers were, you guessed it, Protestants. So while it’s true that it’s a Catholic/Protestant conflict, it’s also just as much an Indigenous/Settler conflict and an Irish Nationalist/British Loyalist conflict. In the simplest possible terms, the Catholics want a unified Ireland separated from the United Kingdom and the Protestants want to remain a part of the Kingdom under British rule. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.
The parliament building is a huge, imposing structure on a hill. Our guide said that it’s pretty much at a stalemate with neither side wanting to talk to the other. And in a quick flash of clarity about how the US is viewed by other parts of the world, he said that Northern Ireland’s governmental animosity and lack of cooperation is “as bad as America.” Ouch.
We then headed up a hill to the Belfast Castle, which is more like a manor home, completed in 1870.
My favourite part of the place was the wild serpentine stone staircase leading out the back of the house into the gardens.
Then back on the bus for more tales of conflict and Troubles and the ongoing idiocy of people refusing to make amends. Honestly, it - plus the gloomy and rainy weather - was all a bit depressing. Our last stop, though, offered a ray of sunshine:
Belfast has a Timmy’s!
Even on a cold, wet, dreary day there were still empty tables at Tim’s, proving that we weren’t in Canada. It was a nice store, though.
I got a large dark roast double-double (yes, it’s called that here, too) and picked up some Timbits for the driver and guide as a “gift from the Canadian Embassy”
Tim’s is right across the street from the City Hall, which is enormous and quite grand.
Then it was back on the bus and return to the ship. I considered hopping the shuttle back into town, but the rain got harder and I figured that I had seen enough of Belfast today.