My Belfast Excursion

Last weekend (the 3rd to the 6th of February), IFSA Butler (my study abroad program) took us to Belfast. We left Thursday morning by bus, arrived at our hotel in the city almost 7 hours later, when we were given a free dinner and then left to our own devices. I didn't think to take any pictures of the hotel, but if you're curious, it was the Jurys Inn. It was in a pretty convenient location (just a few blocks from the City Center) and had clean sheets and an abundant supply of hot water - so we were left with nothing to complain about. That first night after dinner, we ("we" being my core group of six friends and me) hung out in the hotel playing a few games of Mao (card game) before heading out and hitting a pub. Ian made fun of me when I suggested we find a Trad bar because he didn't think they had them in Northern Ireland. Well, he was wrong. They do. Some other friends recommended a place called Brennan's, and their directions just told us to walk until we saw a "rather ornately decorated saloon" and the bar would be across the street. We thought the directions sounded a little ridiculous, but they turned out to be very helpful - I don't think I've ever seen such an "ornately decorate saloon". We later found out that The Crown Bar saloon is rather famous and peeked in, but it was too crowded to stay. At Brennan's though, I tried a light beer called Carling (which I thought was fairly tasty) but didn't end up staying out too late... what can I say, I was lame and exhausted and we had to be up and dressed and breakfasted by 8:30 the next morning for a wild day of outdoor adventuring.

The "outdoor adventuring" began with a 2-hour bus ride out to the coast. Our first stop was to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge in Antrim. We walked a little over a mile to get down to the bridge, crossed it in sets of 8 (it couldn't hold more than 8 people at a time!) and got to enjoy some thrilling views:

After our bridge-crossing adventure, we went on to see Dun Luce (castle ruins) up on a cliff's edge. They told us a crazy story about the whole kitchen falling down into the ocean one evening during a dinner party for a couple hundred people, taking the cook and servants down with it. There were no security guards or railings or barriers, so we were completely free to roam around, go up the old towers, and climb on the broken walls. Here are some photos of the place, including one of a miniature model of how the castle used to look and one of me striking a ridiculous pose in some random corner:

We then went off to lunch at a hotel in a boardwalk-like town (which, I must say, looked very odd to have in a place that's always gray and raining). The food was pretty good - I believe I had chicken in some sort of cream sauce with rice, vegetables, a tomato-and-cucumber salad and let's not forget the garlic bread which basically tasted like toast spread with a scampi sauce. (Om nom nom.)

After the food, we headed to one of Northern Ireland's token site-seeing spots: the Giant's Causeway. It's some sort of geological phenomenon caused by volcanic activity ~60 million years ago. It's a little field of hexagonal and octagonal rocks jutting up along the coastline. It's called The Giant's Causeway because of the myth they developed to describe the odd rock formations. From what I can remember of the myth, two enemy giants, Finn and Benandonner, who lived on opposite sides of the sea decided to duke it out in a trial of strength. Finn built a causeway across the sea so the other giant could come to fight, but Finn worked so hard he passed out on the causeway when he finished. Finn wife heard Benandonner approaching on the causeway, so she took her husband and dressed him up like a sleeping baby. When Benandonner arrived the wife told him to be quiet and not to wake the sleeping baby and when he saw the size of the baby, he said he didn't want to stick around to see how big the father must be and so he fled back along the causeway, breaking up all the stones as he went. ... And apparently when giants run across causeways, they break the stones into perfect hexagonal shapes. Who knew?

I thought it would be a really awesome place to go for a picnic on a dry day - you could sit on the stones and use some of the taller ones as little tables or set up a little buffet... unfortunately, we weren't in Northern Ireland long enough to go back and give that a try. I took a ton of pictures of the place, but somehow the sheer awesomeness of the Causeway somehow wasn't translating into the photos. Here are just a few though, so you can get the idea:

I also tried taking a short video because I thought it might help to see/hear the roaring waves come crashing up against the shoreline and breaking on the rocks...but it doesn't really translate too well in film either, and my camera battery was starting to die at this point, so it's a little blurry and short. At least it's something though!

When we finally got back to our hotel in Belfast, we were pretty exhausted and decided to take it easy for a couple hours before dinner. I took a nice long bath and the water stayed hot the whole time; it was so luxurious. I looked through a few guide books to see what the restaurant options were like in the city (Chloé, I can't tell you how tempted I was to call you to ask you for restaurant advice... it's always my first inclination when I'm in a new city, even if you've never even been to that city.) It was difficult without anything like a Zagat or Citysearch or OpenTable (we had no internet) but I did find several places in our guide books that sounded pretty exciting. In the end though, everyone [else] decided we should just walk out of the hotel and see where we end up. Heading out into a new city on an empty stomach without any set dinner plans terrified me a little bit (no reservations for 7 people, ah!) but I sucked it up and just went with it since I was outnumbered. (I'm not the only one in my little group of friends who craves planning though - my roommate Katie is always very much in favor of having at least a backup plan in lieu of complete spontaneity, but like I said, we were still outnumbered.) It all wound up working out though - we walked for a little while and eventually stumbled upon a crazy eclectic-looking restaurant called Harlem Café and dinner was actually really good. I had linguine with mushrooms and smoked chicken in a garlicy white wine sauce and then a mixed berry crumble with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert:

We stumbled out of Harlem over two hours later very full and with much lighter wallets. No one really felt like make their wallets any lighter, so we opted out of hitting a pub again in favor of going back to the hotel to relax in PJs and play more cards. We wanted to get a couple bottles of wine to bring with us to the hotel, but all the liquor stores were closed by 10pm so we gave up on the wine idea. Five of us went back to Katie's and my room and the rest of the night was still pretty fun. We exhausted all of the non-gambling card games we knew how to play (Mao, President, BS, Egyptian Rat Screw, Spoons, Speed, War, Nertz, etc etc.....) and I suggested we just go ask the concierge if he had any suggestions (honestly, not having easy access to internet via wireless or someone's iPhone really complicates things!). We went down to the lobby in our PJs and socks and asked the concierge if he could recommend something new and he described an Irish version of ERS and then sent us over to the security guard hanging out in the lobby, thinking he might have better ideas. He was talking to some young guy who suggested War (boring!) and then he started describing a way to play Hearts with five people. It was a fun little lobby adventure - our friend Jessie was extremely pleased that we didn't have internet access and were forced to go have odd conversations with the Northern Irish hotel staff.

Saturday was much less structured: we had a Black Taxi Political Tour of West Belfast, but then the rest of the day we were left free to explore the city. The tour was really chilling, but also really interesting. They took us to the separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods where the Troubles began and they talked about the history and showed us the political murals that practically cover the city. I was so shocked to hear that the walls and gates that separate the Catholic and Protestant communities are still in effect: I didn't realize that they still lock all the gates to prevent anyone from crossing sides every night. Here are some photos of the murals (the purple one that has "Chloé" and other names on it is the Peace Wall - the tallest point in the wall dividing West Belfast - and everyone who comes to see it signs it. We saw messages/signatures from a bunch of famous people, including the Dali Lama, Bill Clinton, and Bono.)

After the tour, we spent several hours just wandering around the city. We stopped for lunch at a cute little sandwich place called Grüb and then did lots of window shopping. We found a really neat-looking outdoor mall called Victoria Square where they actually had a frozen yogurt place (!!!) - the first one I've seen at all since leaving the States. I insisted we take a shopping break for some dessert so we all went into the Yogen Früz which was very much like a Pinkberry wannabe. Not quite as delicious (and really, what is?) but it was still pretty fabulous. I had fresh mangoes and raspberries on the plain frozen yogurt and it filled me with so many endorphins. I really wish they had a similar thing in Galway. Oh well! Anyway, we finished the day with more city-exploring, dinner at an Irish version of Qdoba (where I had a yummy vegetable fajita for under £3) and then a pint of beer for dessert at another pub. 

All-in-all, I'd say it was a pretty full and successful weekend and I'm really glad we got to go. And now, I must be off to class (Development of the Castle in Medieval Europe!) but then I'll work on my post about my Irish immersion weekend - so check back soon! 

Slán!