Ah, Belfast. This visit should have happened much sooner, but anyway, here we are.
We spent an afternoon and evening exploring Belfast. The downtown area is beautiful, with lots of old brick buildings and tiny back streets.
Because we only had a short time in the city due to the constraints of our epic road trip schedule, we decided to take one of the famous Black Cab Tours.
These are usually about 90 minutes long, but our driver took us around town on a Friday afternoon for nearly 2.5 hours! His name was Mal, and he was fantastic! You’d benefit from doing a bit of research on the history of the city before taking one of these tours; I was a bit lost at times with all the names!
I’d definitely recommend taking one of these tours. They’re a great way to see a huge area of the city in a condensed period of time, and to get an understanding of the tough history the people here have seen.
And they sure love their murals…
The most sobering part of the tour for me was seeing the peace walls, built in 1969 when ‘The Troubles’ began in Belfast. They were put up as temporary structures to separate nationalist and unionist parts of the city, but are still standing today, with gates that close at night.
There is something about being in Belfast, but I can’t quite put my finger on what the feeling was. I would most definitely go back.
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