Belfast and the Giants Causeway
- Shania Rohr
- Feb 23, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 23, 2019
I traveled to Belfast, in Northern Ireland, with Patrizia - a girl from Austria that I have met - and Jess - the niece of my host family. Patrizia and I caught the train up to Belfast on Friday morning arriving into Belfast just before lunch, Jess came up on a later train in the evening.
Titanic Museum
We went to the Titanic museum which was really well done! The Titanic was built in Belfast and was the pride and joy of the people. By the early 20th century Belfast was a booming industrial town and the main industries were the textile linen mills and the Harland and Wolff shipyards. The Titanic museum is built on the grounds of the old shipyard where Titanic and its sister ship Olympic were built side by side. The museum also had many interactive aspects to it such as videos moving around the ship and a ride about what it would've been like to work in the shipyard. The museum was worth the visit and definitely worth seeing if you're ever in Belfast - history freak or not!!
The Giants Causeway Tour
On Saturday we took a bus tour up the Northern Ireland coast making many stops along the way. We took a quick stop at Carrickfergus Castle for a few pictures and moved on along the coast. It was stunning. We made a pit stop to stretch our legs in a small fishing village and then continued to the Causeway.
There are many myths surrounding the Causeway that the locals have, mainly involving two rival Giants from Ireland and Scotland. It was so beautiful, we walked down along the water and then up the side of the cliff and along the top for another view point. After the Causeway we continued to Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, earlier in the day the bridge had been closed due to high winds but the winds had died down just enough for us to be able to cross when we were there. It was quite nerve-racking but worth it. The views on the other side are insane.
Following our trip over the bridge we went by the Old Bushmills Distillery where we tasted some Irish whiskey. It was a good experience and from it I learned whiskey isn't my drink - but the whiskey drinkers all raved about the Bushmills whiskey. That was a wrap on our day and we made our way back to Belfast exhausted from a long day of exploring.
Our Last Day - The Street Art
Jess had been telling us about the street art in Belfast so we booked a Black Cab Tour that took us around to various murals across the city that explained the struggles between the Irish Catholics and English Protestants of the region. There were struggles across Northern Ireland between these two groups as they wanted different things and it resulted in a lot of violence. The murals all told their own story and our tour also took us to the Peace Wall that divides the city into Catholic and Protestant - on the Protestant side there is a lot more graffiti and visitors from all over sign the wall either with their names or an inspirational message. The gates between the two parts of the city still close every night to keep the communities separate. Following our tour we went to the Cathedral quarter and found many more murals that weren't really political and more just pieces of art!
Click through to see all the murals:
We were also able to go do a tour of the Belfast City Hall, it's a beautiful piece of Victorian architecture that the rich people of Belfast funded as they wanted something to impress England and rival Dublin. A fun fact is the wood work around the Lord Mayors chair was done by the same artist who did the work on the Titanic. In my opinion they succeeded in that, the building is grand and extravagant - just check out the pictures.
Side note: I am obsessed with the stained glass windows they had all unique with their own meaning to a piece of Northern Irish history.
Tim Hortons
Our first night there we found a Tim Horton - the first and only one I have seen since I've been here. I took Patrizia by because she'd never heard of Tim Hortons before and we got some TimBits! She loved Tim Hortons and said it was one of her favourite things about Belfast - so Canada I guess we're wanted in Europe!
Comentarios