Belfast, Dublin, and Edinburgh

With sore feet, a full memory card, and a wallet significantly lighter, Julianne and I returned from our trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland last night. It was incredible and exhausting and informative and I'm so glad we went. 

Since we knew we had some free time before our internship started, we wanted to take advantage of what may be one of the few times we have a long enough weekend to make a big trip. We knew we wanted to go somewhere, but we didn't know where. We kept putting off planning it too because there was so much to do in Edinburgh. Not that I'm complaining at all, I'm loving every crazy minute of it. 

Last Thursday I hiked part of Arthur's Seat with some of the other interns. We didn't make it entirely to the top, but we hiked to the top of one grassy wind blown peak and were able to get a good view of the lovely overcast city. It was really fun, but it was exhausting and I ended up sleeping until we left for our first class. 

Awkward photo of me trying not to get blown off the edge by the strong wind. You can see Edinburgh Castle behind me on the left side

Baby Nessie sighting

Along with the internship, we (the nine interns from the UC system) are taking two classes. The classes are taken simultaneously as a once a week two hour seminar type class led by a very friendly professor. We had our first one Thursday night. They're basically supplements to our internship. They seem pretty straightforward, but very challenging. I'm excited and nervous and I'm looking forward to learning a lot about the Scottish Parliament. We do a lot of reading about Scottish politics and devolution in one of the classes and we do a lot of writing weekly journals and reading responses in the other. We will also write a fifteen page research paper on the topic of our choice under the category of the Scottish Parliament. Any suggestions for a topic? 

After class all the interns went out to a pub together for dinner. I ordered the Mac and Cheese which was described as "A Scottish Classic" so I didn't feel guilty about indulging in what I would consider American comfort food. I sat in a booth with three other interns. It was really fun and I really like all the other interns. It was cool because we could tell funny stories and joke around with each other and then switch to a serious discussion about Scottish independence. While we were eating, they were having a trivia night at the pub. We weren't officially participating, which was probably a good thing since the only two answers we knew were to one question about Congress and one about President Obama. After the pub, since we were really close to where all the University of Edinburgh students live, Julianne and I stopped by Helle's to say hi to her and Erik and their friends before heading home. 

Friday, after sleeping in, my two roommates and I decided to go shopping on Princes Street. We ended up meeting up with two other interns. We bought sandwiches from a European franchise called Pate Manger or something and macaroons from a very classy bakery and ate them in the park (which I found out used to be a loch!) underneath Edinburgh castle. It was very sunny and very lovely and we ended up sitting there for a while taking it all in and talking about how we were bummed we haven't received much information about when we're starting or who we're working for yet. 

By the time we headed home it was four o'clock. "Do you still want to go somewhere this weekend?" Julianne asked me on the walk home. "Absolutely!" I replied. So when we got back to our apartments we pulled out our laptops and started researching The Isle of Skye. It's a very pretty island off the east coast of Scotland that was on our travel bucket list. By the time we finished the chicken curry that Frances made us for dinner, we each had fifteen tabs open in Google Chrome, nothing booked, and were severely confused. While Isle of Skye would be extremely easy to get to and navigate around with a car, we only had public transportation as our only option as we are too young to rent a car (or "hire a car" as the British say). The public transportation was complicated and slow. We would end up spending almost two whole days using various expensive trains, buses, and ferries to get to the island and back, leaving us only one day to explore and hike the beautiful island. 

So our plan did a complete 180. We decided to go to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our reasons were the flight was cheap and short and that we both wanted to go to Ireland and Dublin was only a short bus ride away from Belfast. So at 9 o'clock pm Friday night after playing around with different flight combinations and permutations I booked us a flight leaving from Edinburgh at 7 am the next morning. It was kind of thrilling booking something so spontaneously, but also very exciting. Luckily we didn't have too much time to worry about it because we were leaving in ten hours. We very quickly looked up Dublin and Belfast on WikiTravel, wrote down some sights we thought we might like to see, and came up with a very tentative plan for the almost three days we were going to spend over on our neighboring island. 

The extent of our curry stained planning

We checked the weather forecast (rainy for all three days) and booked our last hostel at one in the morning. I scribbled down our hostel addresses on our planning paper and I took a picture of our flight confirmation with my phone, because we don't have a printer. I threw a few shirts in my bright blue Jansport backpack and fell asleep, only to be woken up all too soon at 4:40 in the morning by my phone alarm. I threw on some clothes, grabbed my backpack, and we walked with a purpose to Waverly Train Station near Princes Street in the brisk predawn Edinburgh. We caught an Airlink Airport Express bus from there and arrived at Edinburgh Airport at six in the morning. We made it through security, where they sadly confiscated my toothpaste, and went to get breakfast. We got "toasties" which are sort of like paninis and very delicious. After buying some more toothpaste, we almost immediately boarded our tiny Flybe plane and flew over the cloud cover and across a strip of the Atlantic Ocean to land less than an hour later in Belfast. 

Exhausted and disoriented, we grabbed maps at the airport and decided to splurge on a taxi on the grounds that we were running on a little more than three hours of sleep in a city we've never been to. The taxi driver was very friendly and chatted the whole way to our hostel in his thick Irish accent. He laughed when I said, "That's awesome!" in response to his bit of commentary that informed us that the name Belfast came from a slight Gaelic variation that meant "the mouth of the river". He then proceeded to inform me that instead of awesome people say "that's great!" and instead of saying "that was so much fun" or "that was a laugh" people say "that was a great craic!" He was very funny and cracked jokes the whole way to the hostel. 

Neither of us had ever stayed in a hostel before so we had no idea what to expect. Our hostel was located near Queen's University. We got buzzed in and the hostel manager let us leave our backpacks there until we could check in later that day. He gave us a photocopied map and very quickly gave us what sounded like a rehearsed spiel about what sites we should see, circling them on the map. We thanked him, grabbed our cameras and purses, and dove right in to exploring the city. 

We were immediately impressed by Belfast. It was very pretty and looked so different from Edinburgh. We both burned through our camera batteries very quickly because we wanted to take pictures of everything. There were huge churches on every block, and each one looked so different from the last. There were little shops and cafes lining the street and most of the buildings were made of brick, which gave the city a very distinct and very cool look. It became apparent almost immediately where the inspiration for the Irish flag came from as all the buildings were that orange brick and you could catch glimpses of the green mountains in the distance at some of the intersections. 

Street near our hostel

Green mountains in the background

City Hall

The main street that we walked up and down a lot

Europa Hotel, more city

As Julianne had never traveled outside of California before ten days ago, I became designated map and time table reader. Luckily Belfast's grid like streets were significantly easier to navigate than in Edinburgh. While we had a list of sights we wanted to see, we weren't hell bent on sticking strict to a schedule in order to see everything, instead opting for a flexible "let's see what happens" kind of walking tour. Which turned out to be amazing. And as we learned multiple times this trip 1. walking is the best way to see/get a feel for a city and 2. some of the best experiences you have traveling sometimes just happen to you. 

We walked from sight to sight that the hostel manager had circled for us on the map in what we hoped was a logical direction, stopping whenever we felt like it to peek in a store or stop by a cafe for a mocha. It was a very fun way to see the city, we got to appreciate a lot of brick buildings and get much needed intakes of caffeine from local coffee shops. 

Our walking tour took us to multiple cool sights. Each sight had a little sign in front of it with information about it. For several of the sights, we just walked by and took a picture. They were cool to see, but we did not have enough time to tour them all. We said that the trip was a Travel Snack. Only enough to satiate our appetite for travel, not enough to see everything we wanted to see, but still enough to get to see some cool stuff in cool cities. We did, however, pick a few sights to tour very thoroughly, and it seems like we made a good decision as to which ones we did, because it was really cool to learn so much about the sights we saw. 

Stop 1: A mall in the center of Belfast with incredible views of the city from the top dome of the mall. When a security guard heard us talking he stopped us and asked where we were from. Several articles we read online during our brief research told us that it is safer to not advertise your Americaness, your political views, and your religious views. We were wary about questions at first. Even if I wanted to hide my Americaness, I doubt I could, and it's also hard to not talk about politics when people find out you're interning at the Scottish Parliament. However, we had absolutely no problem with this anywhere we went. When we told people we were from California, they made jokes about the differences in weather, asked about LA, talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger, or even about the school system. Everyone we talked to was extraordinarily friendly and talkative and interested in where we were from and what we were doing in Europe and what we were doing living in Scotland. We had a very pleasant conversation with the security guard who told us about the time he visited California and how he loved Scotland. Everyone we met while over there was very outgoing, although a lot of the time they were also very hard to understand. That was one of our favorite things to do actually, was to have conversations with the locals. Their friendliness contributed to the impression I got of the Irish and the North Irish being a very fun and open group of people. 

Stop 2: The Statue of Thanksgiving along the Lagan River in Belfast

In front of the Lagan River, next to the statue

View of Cliff Hill, which we sort of went up on Monday

Stop 3: The Big Fish (they didn't strain any brain muscles when they named this)

The big fish is made up of mosaic pieces of art

Stop 4: the Belfast Food Festival. Like mentioned before, some of the best things that you do traveling just happen to you. We stumbled upon this food festival while we were going on our self guided walking tour and decided to stop and check it out. There was a huge tent packed with people and a bunch of booths giving out free samples. This was essentially a free lunch. We sample bread and cheese and more. We stopped to talk to a boy about our age wearing a white wig and working at the Guinness booth. Even though it was only 11:30 in the morning, he kept trying to get us to sample the beer. We passed on the sample, but ended up talking to him about a big holiday coming up called Arthur's Day on September 27th. It is a holiday used to celebrate Arthur Guinness and his creation of Guinness beer. We later would see signs everywhere advertising this holiday. In Belfast and Dublin at bus stops, on billboards, all over the place, there were big black advertisements that said "Paint the Town Black: Arthur's Day, September 27th, 2012". 

Right outside the food festival, a guy stopped us and asked us if we'd like to climb the rock wall for free. Julianne didn't want to, but I really like rock climbing so I did. 

Gravity sucks

Handstands outside the circus school near the Cathedral

Stop 5: St. Anne's Cathedral. It was very pretty and full of stained glass and memorials. 

One of the many really cool stained glass windows in the cathedral that Julianne took a picture of

More lovely brick

The cathedral from the outside

Stop 6: St. Patrick's Church. This was our last stop on our self guided walking tour, so we headed back to the hostel. 

Standard chocolate break on the way back

We also stopped to hear these very talented Australians play some songs for a large crowd in the shopping center. It was very cool, and fun to listen to the live music! 

When we got back to the hostel we checked in. We decided that we wanted to learn more about the Protestant and Catholic conflicts that occurred in Belfast not too long ago, so we went on the slightly expensive but very informative Black Taxi Tour, which turned out to be a misleading name because our taxi was red. The driver picked us up at the hostel and drove us over to West Belfast. The tour was very interesting, very informative, and to use the adjective that Julianne used: sobering. 

Even though this conflict didn't happen to long ago, I knew very little about it. The tour taught me a lot and also inspired me to learn more about it. The taxi tour took us to various murals along different streets in West Belfast. We knew we wanted to see the murals and were originally going to just walk over there and look at them ourselves, but I'm glad we didn't because without the taxi it would have been a very long, cold walk and we wouldn't have known what we were looking at. 

The tour started on the Protestant side. There were murals on the ends of most residential buildings. We got out and walked around and took pictures. It was very chilling. A lot of the murals were about killing and it was very unsettling. There were also Union Jacks on every house and flying from every flag pole. I don't think I've ever seen that many Union Jacks in one place. There weren't very many people out and about which made it feel very desolate. We did see some kids playing in a front yard, but that effect made it almost more chilling. 

Murals

Union Jacks

"Remember", "Respect", and "Resolution"

This is the Peace Wall. The quote on the top silver arc says "Your neighbour is your other self dwelling behind a wall - Kahill Gibran". I didn't even know this Peace Wall existed. According to our taxi driver, they built it in 1970 to split up the Catholic side from the Protestant side. They had to keep adding to the height of the wall because people would throw things over. The wall has gates that you drive through. To this day, some are only open five days a week, and some seven. However all of them close after a certain time, so at seven the day we were driving through, all the gates would close for the night, cutting off access to the other side. Our taxi driver told us the statistic that when they voted about what to do with the wall, 85% of the people voted that it should come down, just not yet. The wounds from the fighting were still very present and not quite fully healed. 

The taxi driver gave us markers and told us that it was a tradition to write something on the wall. I didn't write anything. I don't know why, but it just didn't seem right I guess. Some people had written nice things about peace and quotes about coming together, but people also wrote not so nice things or just signed their name. I didn't want to write anything because it almost felt like it was diminishing the meaning of the wall. Like when bus loads of tourists come just to write their name, it feel like the wall is just a tourist attraction. Something fun to leave your mark on and be a part of. But I felt like if I wrote something it took away some of the meaning of why the wall was up or the suffering that the people there went through. Maybe I made signing it a bigger deal than it was, but the horror felt so real and so recent that I didn't think it was very tasteful to sign it. 

We then went through the gate to the Catholic side. The stories the taxi driver told us about the kind of actions taken during this time were very sad. People felt so passionately about their side that they fought their literal neighbors. There was so much violence and tragedy and it was very hard to see some of it. People of all ages died defending their beliefs. And people resorted to violence because people believed something different from them. I'm not taking sides in this issue at all, but it's very hard to know something like this happened not so long ago. 

Memorial on the Catholic side. You can see the wall to the left.

Mural on the Catholic side. 

There were a lot of Irish flags on the Catholic side as well. My favorite part of the tour/the Catholic side were the huge wall of murals that had to do with other issues. There were several for the Palestine/Israeli conflict, there were some for political prisoners, two for the environment. The taxi driver explained each of the murals to us, and there was a lot I didn't know about other conflicts in the world. It made me want to research more about all the different issues. I recommend seeing it if you take a trip to Belfast. 

Political murals

Gate for the wall

Mural for the environment

After that the taxi driver took us back to the hostel, which we proceeded to leave from and walk to find some food. We wanted to eat at a pub, so we stopped by a couple pubs that were recommended, but they were all packed. We ended up walking over to the other side of Belfast. 

We found a pub called Kelly's, but it didn't serve food. We eventually found a restaurant above a pub, which was close enough. The food wasn't very good, we were rushed through our meal, and I got charged for chips that were supposed to be free. While none of this was actually a big deal, for someone who's very frugal, was running off three hours of sleep, and who had spent the whole day walking, it made me cranky. So after we ate we shuffled back to our hostel to rest. It's amazing how mood changes perspective. While I still liked the city, I wasn't really taking any of it in and just wanted to get back to the hostel. Traveling's very tough and very tiring, but very worth it.

We laid on our beds at the hostel and talked about the murals and checked our Facebooks on my iPhone because the hostel had free wifi. When you're traveling and you're tired you start to appreciate the little things. Like clean clothes, warm food, and definitely free wifi. It's amazing what just an hour break from walking will do. It was nice to recharge and gave us energy to keep going.

We shared a room with nine other people. We liked this hostel better than the other one because it was more personal, everyone was really friendly, and it was smaller. We got free souvenirs and had a nice conversation with one of the American workers at the hostel who left Oklahoma six years ago to volunteer abroad for one year and loved it so much, she stayed. She ended up making sugar cookies later, which was a nice treat for everyone in the hostel when everyone came back later that night. 

We decided we wanted to go check out the nightlife in Belfast. We were entirely not dressed to the standard of going out, but we had to work with what we had in our backpacks. We walked around for a bit and then some guys came up to us and asked us for directions to a club where he was working. I told him what street we were on, then pulled out my map to show him, because I happened to know what he was looking for. "You have a map?" he laughed. "Well, it's my first day here, I've never been here before, and I'm giving you directions," I replied. That shut him up. He then told us to check out the club later, which we did. I've never been clubbing before, but it turns out it was probably the lamest club in all of Belfast. We wanted to get to bed early because we were leaving early to go to Dublin, so we didn't stay long anyway. While it wasn't the dance club we had envisioned, it was still fun to be in what was basically a bar with flashing lights. We met some drunk locals in the bathroom who obsessed over our tans and California culture when they heard our accents and asked where we were from. We walked back to the hostel and tried to be quiet as we got ready for bed because some people were already asleep. 

We wanted to lock our valuables in a locker because it was our first time in a hostel and we weren't sure how trustworthy the people there were. Also, we really didn't want our passports stolen, and even more so, our cameras with our pictures. So we locked them up. Unfortunately the lockers were the creakiest, noisiest lockers I've ever encountered and the locks were the clangiest, clickyest locks I've ever tried to open. I felt horribly obnoxious trying to open it. Eventually I got it open, put my stuff away, and climbed into the top bunk. I fell almost immediately asleep. 

So I was going to try and do this in one post, but it turns out I'm incredibly verbose. Which is useful when trying to write long papers, but not so useful when you're trying to be concise. I do really appreciate you guys reading this, it makes me happy that people take the time to read about what I'm doing, but I'll give you a break and I'll write about the second part of my trip in another post! 

Thanks for reading, I hope you guys all had a good weekend and I'll post the second part soon!