I knew exactly two of those people before this weekend. Now I know all of them, and want them all to come visit. Maybe with the exception of Davey... Yeah, everyone but Davey. When we were introduced (in the order of Sarah, Rachel, Me then Alex) he repeated all our names back to us then leaned in to me and said "I'll remember Rachel's name. I have a daughter named Rachel." Oh boy. Why are you here?
Starting from the beginning? Rachel and I decided not to leave until Saturday morning so we wouldn't spend an exorbitant amount of money sleeping over in Belfast. OH, that's where I went, Belfast. Kind of an important thing to know. So. I went to Belfast. With Rachel. Intending to go to Derry and Giant's Causeway as well as Belfast.
Baked Mom's Apple Pie on Friday afternoon since I was longing for a bit of home. It was just what the doctor ordered, and it cured my homesickness with one slice. The rest of the house seemed to enjoy it, which was a good thing or else I would have eaten the entire thing by myself, so I'm glad they helped :-)
Saturday morning I got up early, had breakfast, packed and caught the Bus of Insanity (referring to the post below, this is my affectionate name for the AirCoach because of the insane amount of money I've spent on it). Took three hours, over which I finished one book (Into the Wild) and started my homework (Northern Protestants) and fell asleep on the long journey. I think Rach passed out in the first twenty minutes of getting on the bus and was out for two and a half hours :-)
Bus pulls into Jury's Inn, which apparently the landmark in Belfast. That's where all tours take off and leave from. Keep this in mind. Once off the bus Rachel calls Sarah (now affectionately referred to as Faude) who tells us to walk left. Once walking, we realize that people are looking at us strangely. We were headed toward Falls Road. This happens to be the 100% Catholic road and between that and Shankill Road, 30% of the people who died in the Troubles, died on these roads, and 80% of the fighting in Belfast took place on these roads. And we were headed right for it within the first two minutes of getting to Belfast. Good choice. And Faude, once called, said that we were supposed to head left if we were facing the Inn, which we weren't, so we were going the wrong direction. This should have told us how this trip was going to turn out, but, being the optimistic people we are, we turned an oblivious eye to the whole situation.
Faude's directions: "Walk right until Harry Potter. I'll meet you there."
Huh?
My impression is that we're walking towards Daniel Radcliffe. I get very VERY excited. Rachel's impression is that we're walking toward buildings that look like Hogwarts. This is not quite as exciting, but the truth, so I deal with it. Harry Potter should be around Hogwarts somewhere, right? Turns out Hogwarts is actually Queens University, and Harry Potter is not actually walking around. But Faude is, and that's almost better :-)
We meet Alex Cummings. She's our host for the evening. Faude calls Joe. At home. On his cell phone. He was in the bath. He is the cab driver that drove her and her parents around when they were there. And she had his cell phone number programmed into her phone. Anyway. So, Joe pulls up in a red cab to my exclamation "Is the Black Cab Tour actually red?" They giggle and say yes.
The Black(Red) Cab tour is where a member of the Belfast community takes you on a tour of Falls and Shankill Roads. Usually the driver is bias towards one road or the other, and ours was Catholic and was born and raised on Falls Road. He said he was six when the Troubles broke out, which means he's about 40ish. It strikes me now that a lot of people reading this will not know who I'm talking about when it comes to the acronyms that I will be using. Here's a quick run down:
IRA: Irish Republican Army. Catholic. Republican. The violent wing of Sinn Fein. Fighting to get the Brits out of Ireland. Known for their violent acts, including an attack on Margaret Thatcher that almost killed her. Referred to as terrorists by the rest of the world, but heroes by the Irish in Northern Ireland. Decommissioned in 2005.
Sinn Fein: (Pronounced Shinn Faine) Nationalist. The political wing of the IRA, fighting to get Britain out of Ireland. Huge political party, and is still around.
UVF: Ulster Volunteer Force. Loyalist (meaning they want Northern Ireland to stay a part of the UK). Protestant. Paramilitary. Prepared to use violence to get what they want. Decommissioned two weeks ago.
UUP: Ulster Unionist Party. Loyalist. Protestant. The political Loyalist party. Not too important anymore.
DUP: Democratic Unionist Party. Loyalist. Protestant. The number one political party in Northern Ireland. Ian Paisley is the head and he's the First Minister of Northern Ireland at present.
I think that's it. Back to the story:
Anyway, we froze to death on Falls Road, but saw all the murals. They're really creepy if you've never seen a picture of them. The bottom part of the Falls was mostly memorial paintings of the Irish who died during the fighting. It really starts to hit home when you see that these people died within the last ten years, and a lot of them were children. When you see that the mural was painted "in loving memory of (name) who died as a direct result of (political party) in 2002." And we were walking along their streets. We saw the Crumlin Road jail which is where all the people were held before going to the H-Blocks. Most of the people held here are Republicans or Nationalists. We also make a brief stop at the Peace wall. This wall is twenty-five feet tall made up of concrete bricks, iron, and steel, topped sometimes with netting. It was built through West Belfast between the Shankill Road and Falls Road to prevent either side from hucking petrol bombs over at each other. Before the wall, a Catholic or Protestant could literally stand on their roof and shoot down into the house behind them because they were that close. Pictures to come.
Black (Red) Cab Tour is over, pay Joe, and give him back his jacket (he saw I was shaking violently and gave it to me at the second stop of the tour). Alex and Faude take us to the Christmas Market at City Hall where we indulge on burgers that fill us twice over for 3 pounds. We meet up with Sarah Whalen (hereto forth known as Sway) and her boyfriend Michael Kaplan at the Crown. Apparently it was founded by a Catholic man and a Protestant woman, and the woman wanted to name it the Crown and the man said only if we put a picture of the crown on the ground outside the pub so that when you enter you have to walk on it. This pub had booths. With doors. How cool?! Anyway, it was filled with old men (seriously, like between 65-80 year-olds) so we left and went to the Bot which was past Hogwarts and closer to Alex's.
Here, waiting for us were Warren, Jamie, Ellie Mskellie (yes, that's her name... Pronounce it out loud and see why I love her name) and Fiona. We were later to meet Davey, the forty year-old who was apparently in love with me, but had a daughter named Rachel. The line was drawn and I stayed away from him all night. He kinda creeped me out. Anyway, we all just hung out and listened to the best play list I've ever heard and sung our hearts out until I was sure I wasn't going to have a voice the next morning. I also discovered that Belfast loves Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi. Go figure.
Rach and I wake up early and head out to catch our (get this) PaddyWagon tour bus that will take us to Giant's Causeway and Derry. We wait for over an hour past when it was supposed to come, then we go in search of it. We got the confirmation e-mail and the codes, but apparently they never got our names on the list, so they didn't stop in Belfast. Wonderful. We got our money refunded and were told to catch a different tour that was going the same place. Allen's Tours. OK, we thought, maybe our luck is changing! It wasn't. We wanted to go to Derry and Allen here was only taking us to Giant's Causeway. So we got off the bus and decided that since we'd wasted so much time, that we should just see Belfast and call it a good weekend. We hop on the coldest tour bus we could have found (and it was the only one that picked up at Jury's Inn, which is where we thought all tours picked up...) and sat on top in the wind. Smart girls, right? We realize we were even smarter when the tour guide tells us that there aren't anymore shootings on Falls and Shankill Roads, but it didn't really matter to him because he was in the bullet proof part of the bus and the people on the top were out of luck. We were sitting ducks. NOT FUNNY. Anyway, we see all the murals in the day time and the tour guide again makes a funny when he says "I know all these acronyms can be confusing, UVF, IRA, UUP, DUP, KFC." We turn the corner just as everyone is scratching their heads and there in front of us is a KFC. That was funny :-)
After getting off the bus and defrosting myself at a coffee shop, the decision is made to go to a movie because it's like 2 Euro cheaper in Belfast than in Dublin. Rachel and I see August Rush and Rach falls in love with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I fall for the little boy and his dimples. I started channeling Julie and wanted to take him home. The music was incredible, and the movie was pretty cute. From there we walk to Faude's apartment and repeat back to her our day's troubles. We meet up with Sway and Alex and head down to the Christmas Market again before racing to catch our bus home to Dublin.
Again, Rach is asleep within the first twenty minutes, but this time, so was I. And we're headed back up to Belfast next Saturday, but this time for free courtesy of PaddyWagon to do our tour of Derry and Giant's Causeway. We leave at 5:30 am. Hopefully it works this time.
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