belfast, northern ireland

After a VERY long bus trip that lasted 11.5 hours, we finally arrived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our bus out of Dingle left so early, that we actually ended up not paying for our last night there because there was no one at reception to take our money!

We had a bit of a scare while we were trying to find our hostel. We were looking our guidebook, following the map and we come to where the hostel should be. Except it was all boarded up. Uh oh. How did they take our booking online if they don't even exist?! I checked my notebook where I had written down the address from the confirmation email we had gotten, and it was different. Luckily they had only moved down the street, so everything worked out!I guess the guidebook wasn't quite updated, lol. We were very tired from the trip, but wanted to walk around a bit anyways because the plan wasn't to be in Belfast for very long, maybe one night. We saw city hall and some of downtown, but didn't make it to the two streets that we wanted to. I can't remember for the life of me what they were called (I know one was Shankill), but it was getting dark and we weren't exactly sure how to get there. These are the two streets where a lot of the conflict took place in Northern Ireland, between Catholics and Protestants, etc.. It's safe nowadays, but for some reason we still felt a little uneasy about going there at night! The conflict in Northern Ireland isn't just religious, its also very political. Northern Ireland is technically part of Great Britain, and there are a lot of people who don't want it that way. Apparently the areas of those two streets are all painted (like the curbs are red, white, and blue for Great Britain in some areas), and have flags flying showing what side they support. We decided to just go back to the hostel and plan. It's hard to always be go go go all the time. You can only plan so far ahead, and then it catches up with you. Just think about how much you would have to plan for say, a one week vacation to Mexico or something. We are CONSTANTLY having to do that with each new city/country. We pretty much know the things we want to see, its co-ordinating them thats difficult. We got a lot done that night though, and decided to spend one more night in Belfast (at the Hilton because it was our 5 year anniversary!), then head up North to see the Giant's Causeway.

The next day was a bit of a splurge day, because we had reason to celebrate! I can't believe it's been 5 years for us already.. that's like a quarter of my life! We also caught a taxi to the Hilton even though we could have walked it. I can't get over how nice the taxis are here, this one happened to be a Mercedes. It felt so weird walking into a nice 5 star hotel with our packs and scruffy clothes. The room was so awesome and soo comfortable. We dropped our stuff off, then went out to the city. It was weird not having to be paranoid about leaving our stuff out on the bed or wherever. Just having that sense of personal space and security was great. We went out and did some shopping (Thanks for the new shirt and shoes honey!) and then went back to the hotel (I keep wanting to type hoStel, lol) to get ready for dinner. The shower there was wonderful - it actually had some pressure to it, what a treat! It was nice to be able to wash my hair properly and also have a tub ledge to put my shampoo and stuff on. It's funny the littlest things you take for granted, like counter space or actually having somewhere to hang your towel while you shower! I was also finally able to blow dry my hair for once! And I straightened my hair the hold fashioned way, using a clothes iron.. lol!The hotel conceirge was able to get us reservations at this restaurant called Cayenne, which was absolutely delicious! We also took a taxi back to the hotel after dinner, and the driver said happy anniversary, the trip was on him. Score!

Belfast was cool, but we didn't get to see a couple of things that we probably should have. There were those two streets I mentioned before, and I kind of wanted to go to the shipyard where the Titanic was built. The closest I got to that was taking a picture of a statue of the guy who founded the shipyards, Harland and Wolf. hahaha. Oh well.. it felt great to just take it easy. Plus I need to save some things to do for the next time I'm here, lol!