Bel fast. Not belfust. I’m going to have to break myself of that habit. And I had visions of doing this post Saturday night after our adventure in Belfast, then bragging about how prompt it was. You can see how that all worked out, right?
We are settled in now, found our favorite walking path (along the sea, of course), favorite shops, favorite coffee shop. All those important things. Next post I plan to show you around here, but, for now, let us focus on Belfast.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. I know a fair amount of the history here – anyone surprised? I will try not to bore you with too much of it (while trying to share with others that might not know much) of the goings on here on this island of Ireland. So, I think I was envisioning a city that looked like it had been through a battle. Maybe a tank or two still hanging around. This is not what we found. We found a beautiful, lively city with a compact city center – easily walkable – some lovely buildings, an incredible city hall! Like, really incredible. When the Victorians decided to build something grand, they did not let a little thing like “Do we need a massive city hall for our smallish city?” get in their way.
The city hall is gorgeous,with beautiful grounds around it. And, as I said before, it’s freaking huge! Belfast is not an old city (by my definition of old). While it has had settlements in the area for a thousand years or so, as a city it’s been around since the 1700s, but only achieved city status in 1888. The oldest structure still standing in the city is McHugh’s bar, built between 1710 and 1715. And, while Belfast has produced many wonderful things – at one point it was one of the largest producers of linen – it has one major claim to fame: the Titanic was built here. When the Titanic was built it was the largest passenger vessel on the seas. When it was launched in Belfast Harbor thousands of people turned out to watch. There is a saying: She was alright when she left here. You’ll need to ask her English captain or her Scottish navigator what happened.😁 At a later date, we will go to the Titanic Museum and tour the last surviving ship of the White Star Lines. But, for now, I will show you the lovely memorial at the city hall-
Another place we went that we thoroughly enjoyed was St. George’s Market. This is an indoor market (huh, imagine that. Let’s put a roof on the market in a place where it rains, to some extent, nearly every day!) that has an incredible variety of merchant stalls. This place is awesome!
After walking a bit to try to work off some of that sandwich (no, I did not eat it all. I do have a limit to the amount of bacon I can eat), we decided to take the hop-on hop-off bus to have a look all around the city and decide what other places we wanted to explore. We elected not to get off, which worked out as the bus was very full and not many people were able to get on at each of the stops. The first stop was the Titanic Quarter. This is located in the area where the ship was built. Harland and Wolfe, the ship builders, still have a presence in Belfast which is pretty cool. The Titanic Museum itself is quite the building (no good pictures of it though. Guess you will have to wait until we actually go to the museum next month). Also in the area is one of the last surviving battleships of World War I, or as it is known over here, The Great War. We intend to tour this ship as well. In this same area is a large filming studio with a mock up of a ruined castle outside…if you have been hiding under a rock and haven’t heard of this little show called Game of Thrones…this is the studio where it was filmed. When it wasn’t out filming in many other locations around Northern Ireland, that is. What a boon to tourism that show has been to this area!
As we drove around on the bus, we got a much clearer picture of Belfast. There are still neighborhoods that have walls between the Unionists (generally Protestant) and the Republicans (generally Catholic). You can see evidence of past violence, but all we saw was people going about their lives. Great strides have been made within the communities to stem the violence that once took over everything. For those that might not be familiar with the history of this area (like, why are there two Irelands?), here is my very brief summary. I’ll try to get this right…
In the late 1100s, the English (I’ll call it this to avoid confusion. Really, it was the Normans) army came over at the request of an Irish king to help repel invaders. This king had no idea of the centuries of conflict he was causing! Okay, so now the English are in Ireland and they like the place, but feel it needs to be a little more “English” and a lot less “Irish”. This led to bringing over some English nobility to rule over the Irish peasants, regardless of whether they were peasants or not. Move on a few centuries and you have the Protestant Reformation – King Henry VIII dissolved the convents and the monasteries, and essentially outlawed Catholicism. This did not go over well with the deeply faithful Catholic people of Ireland. Interestingly enough, the area that this really did not sit well was in Ulster, in the northeast part of the island. In fact, this area was such trouble that the English government began to import English and Scottish Protestants (called the Plantation of Ireland) and settled them in Ulster. Fast forward another few centuries of conflict, Ulster is now deeply Unionist (being a part of the United Kingdom) and Protestant, with pockets of staunchly Republican (wanting a free Ireland) and Catholic populations. You now have powder keg that has been lit. Now I will try to wrap this up…there were many events, and this is an extremely simplified explanation – please realize that I am leaving a lot out! In 1922 Ireland was made an independent republic – minus 6 counties in Ulster (the other 3 counties in Ulster remained with the republic) that became Northern Ireland and part of the United Kingdom. You still have Unionists and Republicans battling each other in the north. Both sides have caused much death and destruction over the decades, but Belfast was a city divided and at war with itself, and it was particularly violent in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The Good Friday Agreement was signed by both sides in 1998 and both sides have worked hard to find peace. The current uncertainty with Brexit is causing a lot of concern around here, but that’s another subject entirely! Hopefully, this brief explanation will cause some people to be interested in knowing more about the history of Ireland.
Anyway, back to our brief tour of Belfast. I did not know that C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) was from Belfast! There is a beautiful square in the east part of the city dedicated to him. There are bronze sculptures of many of the characters from the stories around this square. We drove by the Parliament buildings – which are not being used right now (although the politicians are still being paid, because the UK told them they weren’t behaving – go figure). We drove through some lovely neighborhoods and some not so lovely neighborhoods. All in all it was a fantastic experience and I look forward to seeing more.
Belfast, and Northern Ireland, definitely deserve to have people come here. The Republic of Ireland gets the majority of the visitors, with a few maybe making a day trip to Belfast. While it feels different up here, more English I guess, the accent is super cool! Liam Neeson is a good (and understandable) example. It’s like a little southern Irish, a little British with a healthy dose of Scottish thrown in. And they love the use the word “wee”. It’s so cute. Everything is wee, even if it isn’t. 😜