Belfast

The next morning (after another night of Pete complaining that WiFi is hard to get), we headed off to Belfast via the Mountains of Mourne.

The motorway was pretty good (I think the Germans financed for it, something to do with the Europe Community, but it still doesn’t explain to me what the Germans get out of it).

It took awhile to get used to the car’s blinkers and windscreen wipers being on the opposite sides to what I’m used to. So when I had to turn a corner, on came the wipers and then when we had a little bit of light rain, on came the blinkers. I eventually grew used to it and luckily there wasn’t much rain during the whole of the holiday. (Needless to say when I arrived back home, I had the wipers going when I turned a corner).

We missed the coastal tourist turn off around the the Mountains of Mourne settled for a look at the city of Mourne. Anyway, after a couple of hours we arrived at Belfast. It took awhile to find our accommodation due to one way streets etc, but we got there.

Belfast, I found totally different to Dublin, but it was interesting. We spent 3 nights there. We did a bus tour around the city (including visiting the Titanic museum – very impressive), a black-taxi tour highlighting the areas where a wall was erected between the Catholics and the Protestants. I couldn’t understand the cabbie very well, but he tried his best to give us a good understanding of what happened.

(above): These are some of the murals I came across on the Black Taxi tour:

(photo from www.causeaycoastandglens.com)

We also did a bus tour up to Giants Causeway (above) which was as expected very spectacular. We were also shown on the bus tour some of the sites (eg the “Dark Hedges”) that appeared on the TV series, “Game of Thrones” (left).

The young woman conducting the bus tour likened the Giants Causeway to other remarkable natural features around the world quoting the “Great Australian Road” as an example. We quietly corrected her at the end of the bus tour that she probably meant the Great Ocean Road. She laughed and took it all in her stride,saying that she’s on a learning curve and will definitely get it right the next time.

It was during this time when I was going on one of my jogs when I did some damage to my hamstring. So I put my joggers away never to use again on tour. Being a jogging addict, I missed my early morning runs, but I still did plenty of walking.

Next stop: Derry