More Britsh than Britain

Back online after a few days with limited internet access...time to play a bit of catch up!

We've met several Americans in the various B&B's we've been at, and it seemed that only a few venture up to Northern Ireland. We're really glad we did. Belfast was fascinating, and more so because we splurged on something I've never done before - a taxi tour. A very kind man named Ken picked us up at Belfast's huge City Hall and drove us for over an hour through both the Catholic/Republican and Protestant/Unionist sections of Belfast. He made a point to emphasize that there was extremism and brutal killing on both sides of the conflict, and we certainly saw evidence of that. We went first to the Protestant Shankill road area, which Ken called "more British than Britain":


There were peaceful murals, like this one:


And less peaceful, like this one, in which the gun barrel points at you from wherever you look at it:


And this church behind the locked up gate made me kind of sad:


We drove along the "Peace Wall" that divides the two communities and stopped to make a graffiti contribution. Lo wrote her name considerably bigger than mine...can you find it?



Then we drove through the gate (there are several throughout the city between the two communities, most close at the end of the work day, a few stay open to midnight or so), and headed to the Catholic section of town. The Sinn Fein headquarters were just a few minutes away, with this picture of Ireland that wouldn't be at all popular just down the road:


A mural of the IRA hunger strikers that died in prison as they protested being treated like criminals rather than political prisoners back in the early 80's:


And who knew that Frederick Douglass had such a strong Irish connection? I'm sure I was supposed to learn and retain that in some college class that I took, actually...


Here's Lo in the back of our little taxi, waving at me obligingly as always:


And this saying painted on a wall in a nondescript Belfast street was one of my favorite things we saw:


Belfast was our last day in Northern Ireland. We headed back south the next day for a last night in the Irish countryside before being back in Dublin for our final three days. On the way, we passed through Downpatrick, which is where the story of St. Patrick in Ireland begins and ends. He's buried there under this simple, massive, stone:


There was a really well done little center that walks visitors through his life and times, using his own words. It was unabashedly and unapologetically spiritual and a very glowing take on Ireland's favorite saint.

We ended our day in Trim, which was a really, really important town about 800 years ago. This castle is what it's famous for now. Here's the keep, and me trying to scare off intruders at one of the gate houses:



Our B&B in Trim came with a kind, chatty owner called Anne, whose husband raises bird hunting dogs, and their dog had just had a litter of irresistable puppies. So irresistable, in fact, that the previous guests (Americans from Florida) had taken one home with them. We resisted, but Lo had a great time with the little puppy family.