5 posts tagged “belfast”
Before leaving Belfast, we decided to have a stroll around the (amazingly stinky) river and check out East Belfast, where we saw, wait for it...more murals!
Another peace line:
On our way out of the city (actually, it was the opposite direction, but not far from Belfast), we went to the awesome Ulster Transport Museum. With tons of old cars, trains, motorcycles, and some Titanic stuff, I called it the zoo for boys, but actually I was more excited to go than H! I took a gazillion photos of everything, which proved less interesting when I looked at them later, but here are some highlights:
The De Lorean, another Belfast product, looks way uglier in person. Ah, the 80s, they thought it looked really cool:
For the Deadwood fans:
We planned to drive up the Antrim coast, loosely following the route taken by my esteemed former colleague, and land somewhere for the night in either Portrush or Londonderry. If I had it all to do again, we would have spent more time enjoying the glens of Antrim and the coast, rather than just trying to get from point A to point B before dark.
Paranoid I might lose this, so posting...
I will finish this part of the recap if it kills me. Lessee, I was last in West Belfast, yes? After our self-styled tour, we took a bus down to the university area. We went to Lisburn Road, the supposed Fifth Avenue of Belfast. It's cute, rather like Park Slope, but underwhelming. Maybe we didn't walk far enough.
On the advice of the drunken Derryman, we headed over to the very promisingly named Sailorstown in search of the Rotterdam Bar, which apparently still has outdoor toilets, live music, and booze. An honest-to-goodness dive bar, nothing fancy, not for the squeamish. We could not wait! I've read that it used to be a holding pen for prisoners enroute to Australia. If something involves prison, you have my attention. Sailorstown is pretty bleak and run down, we were there just before dusk, and I wouldn't advise wandering around there after dark, but it's really interesting. Sort of a hard core Red Hook, with old drunks instead of hipsters:
There was an amazing abandoned church down the street which is fortunately being renovated and not being razed for luxury loft condos or some shit:
However, much to our chagrin, the Rotterdam was closed. An old man standing outside a nearby bar told me the roof had caved in, but I see that it is going to be reopened. Will have to go back! With the development all over the city and the authentic character of the neighborhood just aching to be exploited, I'm sure they'll be bitching about IKEA Sailorstown next time.
As much as we wanted to sample one of the seedy bars in the area, it was getting dark and there were no signs of food in Sailorstown, so we hotfooted it back to the Cathedral District, walking under highways and passing empty lots and surly teenagers up to no good. There's probably a nicer way to walk to the docks, but we didn't find it. For dinner, we ended up across the street from our hotel, to the awesome Potthouse, which is very clubby and hip, but has an amazing deal for two courses for two people and a bottle of wine for 25 pounds! Good deal, and good food. We had the odd experience of watching music videos with entirely different music playing over them while we ate. We were pretty much the only customers in the restaurant:
I was thoroughly impressed with the bathrooms, the ladies' has freaky mannequin heads in the stalls and photos on the door which I took a ton of photos of:
As I mentioned before, everyone says you *have* to take a Black Taxi tour of West Belfast and the murals. But H, averse to any thing that even hints at tour, was determined we could do it ourselves without a guide. After some breakfast in the beautiful Great Room at the hotel, we went out to figure out what bus to take. The Belfast bus system is fantastic, all lines begin and end around City Hall, have easy to follow routes, and an all-day pass costs about $5. Before getting on the bus, we did go inside to see the exhibit at City Hall, but missed out on a tour as they were in session. Saw the Christmas tree light switch that Bill Clinton pulled when he visited Belfast (they, like me, are big fans of The Bill) and the building is lovely:
Falls Road is the Catholic section of West Belfast that has seen a lot of violence, but it's nothing like I expected. Safe, working-class, sorta like Queens, even a bit boring. We wandered into a cemetery, which was sad to see many who were killed very young in the worst years of the Troubles. Some of the graves were like MENSA test questions: "Here lies our mother, Mary Rose, in loving memory by Jack and Shannon. Also her son, John Joe. Also our uncle, Patrick Riley. And my wife, Sheila. And our grandfather, John Joe." Whaaa?
Most of the murals are pretty peaceful, mourning the lost or supporting other causes:
Pub on Fells Road (which had snugs!):
At one point, we wandered by a large lot, filled with broken furniture and wood:
We wandered a bit more of the neighborhood, which wasn't scary at all, but I wouldn't recommend to most tourists to wander there by yourself. We're just hardcore like that, I guess. Cool to see a mural being painted:
I think it was going to be something to do with Oliver Cromwell. Or maybe Vikings. Or pirates! Okay, maybe not pirates.
Grimmest community center ever:
On that cheery note, I say good day sirs!
But back to Belfast. It's a weird town, at first glance. The downtown area can be a ghost town after business hours, which is true in a lot of cities, but Belfast is small. There are still a lot of run-down buildings and streets, but overall its a very pretty city. H was quite delighted with the run-down-ness, as nothing fills him so much with delight as decrepit buildings (Montevideo, Uruguay wins the prize for decrepitness, hands down).
What's really amazing is how much construction is going on in Belfast. I imagine that in a few years, it will look totally different. You see this sort of thing everywhere:
I can almost still hear my in laws imploring me in English and Russian (which I don't speak), to NOT DRIVE IN DUBLIN. We had no plans to, but since we were driving north to Belfast first and rentals are cheaper in the republic, we ended up renting a car through Dan Dooley in Dublin city center. FYI, you will get screwed with insurance no matter how you slice it: our Mastercard would cover it, with a 2000 euro deposit, or you can get basic insurance from DD that you pay the first 1000 euro for. You can do even more insurance that you only pay the first 120 euro for any damage, but that will run another 12 euro or so per day, so it really depends on how much damage you plan to make. ;) I don't drive at all (I did just get my learner's permit, so lookout!), so poor H was going to have to figure out how to drive on the left side with a manual transmission. It was still not a bad deal, at 215 euro for 10 days, still miles cheaper than the shitbox we rented in Uruguay last year for a few days.
Before setting off to get our Irish shitbox car, we tried to get out into the city to see at least one more Dublin sight. We chose Dublin Castle, which is not terribly impressive in it of itself (at least from the outside, we didn't have time to do a tour inside), but the the Chester Beatty Library is pretty cool, if you are the sort of person who gets excited by seeing an original manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy (which I am). While seeing the exhibit on Leonardo's notebooks on water and its properties was fairly cool, I only care so much about the flow of streams and the optimum design for a waterwheel. Even cooler was a lot of the manuscripts by lesser known people on science and technology. I took an awesome class Italian Renaissance history and literature my last semester in school and did a small presentation on Marsilio Ficino, who, in addition to writing insane-sounding medical tracts about drinking the breast milk of a young (but willing, at least) woman to stay young, apparently was the first to use the semi-colon, as I learned at the library. Some pix of Dublin Castle:
The drive was fairly easy once we were out of the city, other than some close brushes with the left-side rearview mirror. I guess when you are used to being on the left side of the car, you misjudge how much room you have on the left side when you switch sides. Thus, we clipped the poor mirror several times accidentally. This a theme you will hear often. We were also pretty surprised at how little fanfare there was when we crossed the border into Northern Ireland. Other than suddenly much improved roads and lack of Gaelic signs, you'd have no idea. I realize they took down the checkpoints that used to be on the border, but it's kind of disappointing to cross a border and get no passport stamp.
Got to Belfast after a few hours, but realized I had no idea where our hotel (The Merchant Hotel) was, though I had printed out the confirmation and even brought them their Hot List certificate, nothing had the address. So after a long time of driving around lost, we found the tourist office where I loaded up on maps and even a fancy brochure on the hotel. The Merchant is very central, in the Cathedral District, which is vaguely like Soho, if you squint. It's a few blocks of cobblestoned streets and, of course, cathedrals, with a smattering of restaurants and bars. We checked into the hotel, which is very homey and welcoming, and I asked about Black Taxi tours, as there seem to be a million to choose from. The receptionist suggested, *without irony*, that we take the Bentley. H and I found it hysterical for days the idea of touring the previously troubled areas of West Belfast in a fucking Bentley. Our room was lovely, a Loft Suite with an awesome bathroom and nice sitting room:
Will continue later, gotta go home...
