For day two, we hopped a bus to Belfast, Northern Ireland. On our way through the Irish countryside, we stopped at another 6th Monastic site at Monasterboice with one of the best preserved Gaelic crosses in Ireland.
Northern Ireland, of course, is a separate country from Ireland so the Irish tour bus could not take us into the walled off Protestant and Catholic settlements. The settlements still are walled to keep them separate. Times have changed and its certainly not the same Belfast that was as dangerous and deadly as Beirut. Nowadays, Protestants and Catholics work together in the downtown Belfast, but they still return to their particular communities and they stay locked within the safety of the walls until the next day.
Because the Irish bus couldn’t leave the city center, we took the Black Cabs around Belfast to see the murals that are tributes to those who have been killed in the “troubles.” That’s what the Northern Irish called the time of the deadly skirmishes between the Protestant and the Catholic. The conflict is less a religious conflict a more a conflict between those who are still loyal to England and those who are loyal to Ireland.
Belfast is also the city where the Titanic was built and there’s an impressive museum and monument to the great ship. The museum focuses more on the building of the ship than most other Titanic exhibits I’ve visited. They still have a lot of pride in what they built. As they say: “The Titanic, built by Irishmen; sunk by an Englishman.”
Looking outside one of the windows from the Titanic museum, you can see the studio where they film “Game of Thrones.” It’s that yellow and gray striped building in the upper right corner:
This is the Paddywagon we took to Belfast. No way this big green bus with a big leprechaun head is going to do well in the Protestant sections of Northern Ireland!
