The Troubles I’ve Seen: Northern Ireland, Day 1

We’re beginning another stretch of traveling! So much so that if we keep to our intended publishing schedule we’re going to be talking about October in February of ’23 or so. That seems… weird, and we’ll be chewing on how we want to handle the timing. For now, though – buckle up! We are heading for the North of Ireland to finish up our honeymoon, just a bit over ten years later than expected. See, we went to Ireland (and a splash of Scotland) in 2012 for said honeymoon. We went clockwise starting in Dublin, and we had intended to finish up in the North. We had some travel shenanigans that caused some on-the-fly changes, including the complete scrubbing of anything north of Galway. “Someday”, we told ourselves, “we’ll be back to see the rest.” Welp, someday turns out to be August of 2022.

Getting to Belfast was a sojourn of its own, but we’re deciding more and more that commuting minutiae are kind of like telling people about your dreams – the stories are intense and impactful to you, and barely interesting to anybody else. So, to keep this to a paragraph rather than a page: we began with a 4ish hour train ride to Lisbon; trains continue to prove out as simple, comfortable, and effective transport in many situations. We had more time than we would have liked between arrival and flight check-in, but the next train would have been cutting it too close. So, dinner at Chez Roi de Burgeur (they call it something else in the U.S. Sandwich Monarch, maybe? Something.) in the airport before checking into our Aer Lingus flight. The flight went smoothly but, and this is important, it left at 10:00PM. So, we arrive in Dublin at ~1 AM, then a transfer to a handy bus route, and we were in Belfast by about 4. Because we had been sitting so long we eschewed the waiting taxis and rolled out bags 20 minutes to our hotel on the river. We were in bed by 5. Easy peasy!

After a refreshing (ahem) 6 or so hours of sleep, we got up, had some quick room service toasties, and made ready for our day. As is usual for us, we set ourselves up with a day that wouldn’t necessarily require a lot of us to begin our trip. In this case, that meant a black cab tour of The Troubles. There are a lot of providers of these or a variant tour, ours was a nice gentleman who never identified his personal take on the situation directly. (That said, you’d have to be intentionally obtuse not to see where he came down on things.) In case you don’t know: Belfast was a flashpoint and a focus for severe unrest in Ireland, for many many years but most (in)famously from the late 60s to the the late 90s. They call this time “the Troubles.” I really don’t want to talk about it much more than that, maybe because I’m sitting in a Belfast restaurant right now so my sensitivity to the issue has been jacked up to “12”. Maybe it’s because a tour guide this morning glided past the subject with a couple of vague references to “orange” and “green”. I just know that it’s been made clear that it’s more than just a touchy subject here. Besides, I’d have to learn a lot more before I’d feel qualified to describe things with anything approaching accuracy. And finally, unless we’ve got a base of readers that are far younger than either of us think we do, you probably know what I’m talking about.

Anyway. The black cab tour is definitely “general overview” versus “deep dive”, but it was very interesting for all that. We were first taken to a Unionist neighborhood famous for its murals. Murals seems to be Belfast’s political speech of choice – they can be positioned as memorials while still conveying loads of other meaning. The neighborhood was still festooned with bunting and flags from the Queen’s Jubilee (back in June), which in and of itself is making a point.

In any case, we saw the murals and, since it was the wrong time of year to see them in person, we were shown photos of the bonfires that are built every year to “celebrate the victory of William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.” Picture me making giant rabbit ears (quote marks) in the air as I say that. We then took a drive along the Peace Line, a picture of which heads this post. The Peace Line is a dividing wall between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods; it is Berlin Wall-esque in scope if not magnitude; it goes on for a while. There is an official graffiti policy in place to try to corral the constant vandalism it used to go through and it seems to work; every few months there will be a concerted scheme to go over it with fresh, purposeful street art. It eventually gets defaced, but seems to take the edge off some of the more virulent messaging. After exploring the Peace Line we drove into the other side of town and saw some similarly-themed murals, as well as some historical locations of note. We spent a fair bit more time on this side of things, but not so much that we couldn’t get a feel for both groups.

Our driver dropped us where ever we wanted, which in this case turned out to be the Europa Hotel (the most bombed hotel in Europe it is said, although surprisingly this is not printed on their business cards) for high tea. Why yes, we do enjoy a schedule of stark contrasts. It was lovely, and if you’ve been following along for awhile you’ll understand when I say it was a more genuine and enjoyable version than what we experienced at the British Museum. It was yummy and leisurely, and made even better by the old-timer sitting behind us who was clearly a serious regular; the young man who sat him apologized that none of his usual friends (staff members) were around due to a staff training. Even so, the temp knew what the man’s standing order was. We heard the man telling stories, which the other man listened to graciously. It was really quite lovely. Worth the trip even if you don’t get this much local color.

By now, our tiring day of travel was catching up to us so we walked back to our hotel, stopping to get some non-hotel-priced munchies to have in the room for the next few days. We settled, took advantage of television stations in English(!) to watch a little bit of random nonsense, and then settled in for our long winter’s naps. Tomorrow will be a busy day – if we can get to all of it.

Cliffhanger!