Belfast - Titanic Quarter

Belfast is desperately trying to clean up its act....
To attract tourists, there is a new development on the other side of the river to the city buildings. The development proposed kinda reminds me of Cockle Bay in Sydney. They call it the Titanic Quarter.

model of the RMS Titanic

Belfast is where the RMS Titanic and its sister ships the Olympic and Britannic were built.
It's quite funny as people from southern Ireland say that it's crazy that they are claiming fame for a ship that sank. But the northern Ireland people just say "well it was fine when it left..."

Seeing as there wasnt much to do in Belfast, I decided to go and visit the Titanic quarter and do the tour of the docks.
The building of the Titanic commenced in 1909 and was completed in 1912. It was meant to be a very grand and luxurious cruise ship.

Visited the dry dock that they used to outfit the Titanic. The gates at the end are opened and water enters the dock. The ship is guided in by ropes that are wound around big cogs that are all along the side of the dock. Once inside the dock, the gate is shut and water is pumped out of the dock until it is gone and the ship sits on the log bed shown in the photo.


The pumps are very powerful and apparently it takes only 1 1/2 hrs to fully drain the dry dock.
The tour also took us into the pump room.

After visiting the Titanic Quarter I took a walk around the Odessy Arena and W5 Exhibition centre that are on the same side of the river as Titanic Quarter.
The arena is Belfast's multi-purpose arena and they frequently have ice hockey games there. One of the big sports in the are is ice hockey. The W5 Exhibition centre is kinda like a version of the Powerhouse museum. W5 stands for Who What Where Why When (well those are the W's but i'm not sure of the order...)
They have interactive exhibits and it just so happened they also had a Star Wars exhibition... so being the geek that I am... I was so there!

aliens from Star Wars

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Newtonards

Sun 24th Oct

Today was a pretty quiet day.
Woke up and decided to go to a local church. Newtonards (where my uncle lives) is around 20min drive out of Belfast. It's a pretty small town.

The most popular church here seems to be the Presbyterian church and there are 2 about 100meters from each other. Both having beautiful sandstone buildings dating back to around the 1850's. I walked around town early but church services are around 11am here and it's very quiet before then as all shops close until 1pm. I guess most people go to church or sleep in. So from walking around I found that there are 3 Presbyterian churches, 1 Methodist, 1 Anglican Church of England and 1 Catholic church. Just like Starbucks there is one on every corner...

Visited one of the Presbyterian churches closeby. The people were so nice and welcoming and it's great to see the church community here. I must admit though today i was very homesick for NR@N.

Had a family lunch before heading off to the hospital to see my cousin Charles.

Arvo was pretty boring as I walked around the local shops for a bit.... there's really not much to do in Newtonards. I couldnt go into Belfast as my uncle fears I might get bashed or stabbed or killed if I walk down the wrong street - maybe into a Catholic part of the city...
I think he is over reacting in some way but I can see that ignorance and intolerance is still present in a large part of the Northern Ireland population.

Strean Presbyterian Church Newtonards

Antrim coast & the Giant's Causeway [incomplete]

Sat 23rd Oct

Took a scenic drive north of Belfast up to the top of Irland where the Giant's Causeway is... it's a major tourist attraction and did not disappoint.



Carrickfergus Castle

Giant's Causeway

More photos here.

Belfast

Fri 22nd Oct

Went into the city of Belfast which is the capital of Northern Ireland. The city centre is actually very small and you can walk across it in about 10-15mins.

First stop was City Hall and there was a free tour.
In 1920 Ireland was split into North and south with an independant south and an English north.
The city hall for Belfast is quite elaborate considering it is for a city council. Each city in northern Ireland has its own city hall so for the number of people that are under its jurisdiction.

coat of arms for Belfast

Then joined a walking tour of the city. My uncle wanted to just take the hop-on-hop-off double decker bus that goes around the city but i'm not so keen on those as they are just too touristy. I mean any tour is touristy but i find walking tours are good because you can ask questions and have time to take photos.

I must admit that i'm not very good at keeping up with the news in everyday life. And perhaps i was too young to understand. A lot of the history of Belfast centers around 'the troubles'. Belfast has had civil troubles since around 1969. On the surface it seems like a religious war but it really isnt. It's more cultural. The irish people who are Catholic are keen on unification with the south and the English people who are protestant are still loyal to Great Britain. So the civil troubles are more cultural than religious and more republican vs loyalist.

We walked past some walls that still had bolts in them. The gates they held have been removed but they are a reminder of the days in which everybody in the city had to enter on foot and be searched. Cars were not allowed as they might contain bombs. (1n 1972 the IRA detonated 22 bombs in Belfast).

The guide did say that people are still for the most part living in the past. The city of Belfast is an area where the Irish Catholic and English protestants must work together. But as for living together.... there is a wall that separates living areas. If you are a protestant and stray a street too far then it is likely that you might be bashed or killed.

The council is trying to change and clean up northern Ireland. They are trying to make Belfast a safer place where tolerance is embraced and so each month has some festival of some kind.
The fish lies along the river. Taking a closer look, it's made of ceramic tiles which have pictures and newspaper articles and drawings of some of northern ireland's history. There are drawings made by children in Belfast which depict the hopes of that generation of peace.

The thing to note with the fish is that there are red spots over the top of it. Symbolic of the fact that blood has been shed in the past.

Noting some of the ignorance and intolerance both in the past and present northern ireland just made me so sad. But the innocent optimism of kids is refreshing in such a depressing city.

the Albert memorial clock tower... that isnt quite straight... it leans

Lagan statue. She holds a ring of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving square was set as a place where people of NI could be unified in thinking about charity and be thankful for things they have regardless of religion or political thoughts. The locals dont think much of this statue but maybe the irony is they are unified in not thinking much of it.

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Dublin to Belfast Northern Ireland

Thur 21st Oct

My train from Dublin to Belfast was at 1pm so I had the morning to kill.
Decided to go to the Jameson distillery to see the process of making whiskey.
John Jameson started making whisky at the Dublin site in 1780. The main distillery is now located in Cork and the whisky is now trucked to Dublin in unmarked trucks and bottled at this site.

So what makes Jameson's whiskey special is that it is triple distilled. So firstly the barley is soaked in water and allowed to half germinate. Then heated with anthracite which is smokeless. Apparently this is why Jamesons has a different taste and is less smoky. Then they mix and mash barley, malt and then boil the mix in hot water. They add yeast and it ferments. The mixture is distilled - so it is heated and since alcohol has a low boiling point, it becomes gas faster and moves up the glass funnel and then is cooled. Triple distilled means it is repeated three times making the end product a lot smoother as it has removed impurities.
The alcohol is concentrated after distillation and is around 70-80%... so they dilute it with spring water and then barrel it. The flavours come from the fact that they use old barrels to store the whiskey in. The barrels are imported mostly from the US and have been used before. The previous contents and the type of oak give the whiskey its flavour as it is matured for at least 5 years.

Bought the special 12 year old distillery reserve whiskey which is only available in Dublin or Cork.


After the distillery i decided to take a walk around and look at the bridges. As previously mentioned, quite a few of them are named after prominent Irish writers.

James Joyce bridge over the River Liffey

Next stop was the National Museum in Dublin. I could actually have spent a whole day there... but I was starting to get a little cultured out. I didnt have much time so in the hour left I just visited the irish crosses exhibition.
The Celtic cross features a cross with a circle around the intersection. Legend says that this cross was created by St. Patrick. He was trying to convert pagan Ireland to Christianity so he incorporated the circle into the cross as they previously worshipped the sun.

 

Boarded my train for the 2hr trip to Belfast....

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Ireland Tour Day 6

Wed 20th Oct

Well another early start as we left Galway to get back to Dublin.
On the way we stopped at Clonmacnoise. The town along the river Shannon was founded in the mid 6th century. St Cieran established the town around a monastry.
We visited the ruins of his cathedral and the grounds around which contains a lot of gravestones.

St Cieran was very clever and established this town along the river where it would be a key traffic site. Many people would cross the river at this site and the town benefited from trade. St Cieran also marketed this site very well and it was believed that if you were buried here then it would guarantee you sure passage into heaven. The big keymark cross was donated by a wealthy politician. He knew his deeds in politics were crooked so he tried to buy his way into heaven by donating this huge cross and guaranteeing his burial on this site.

Arrived back in Dublin around 2pm and had free time until 6pm when the coach was due to take us to our group farewell outing.
Decided to go visit the book of Kells which I had decided against when i arrived but it was raved about so it was off to Trinity College again....
Then i visited the James Joyce centre. Dublin takes great pride in the literary accomplishments of their people. They have a heap of bridges the cross the River Liffey and they have named them after Irish writers such as Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) and James Joyce (Ulysses).


At night we were taken by bus to a pub just outside of Dublin. It was our tour group farewell dinner. There was live entertainment in the form of Irish dancers doing dances similar to Lord of the Dance. There was also some musicians. I'm starting to get to know some of the Irish songs and have really enjoyed hanging out in the pubs in Ireland listening to Irish music and having a drink... I still dont really like beer but found that I really liked an Irish cider called Bulmers.

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Ireland Tour Day 5

Tue 19th Oct


This morning we started out by visiting a Celtic crystal factory. The glass is handcut and the designs are Celtic designs with some having been taken from the Book of Kells.
Making crystal is quite an art. The patterns are hand done from memory and not from any kind of stencil or anything.

We watched a demonstration of a guy cutting different patterns into a glass bowl. It seemed to take him no time at all. The pattern at the bottom of the bowl was called the rose pattern. It just looked so simple when he was cutting the glass but it looks so good and precise with spacing etc.

The glass is quite thick to begin with. Then the pattern is cut twice into it. The glass is treated with acid and then polished to shine it up.

the Claddagh pattern

Next stop along the way was the marble factory. There are different types of marble mined in the area. We had a brief intro in which the guy mentioned that the marble dates to the pre-Cambrian period (which spans a long time but prob around 4000 million years ago. There are a lot of marble quarries around Galway and the Connemara region. Marble is basically limestone but the Irish green colour is due to the zinc impurities.

Next we headed out to the Killary Fjord where we did a Connemara cruise. There are 3 fjords in Ireland with the waterways carved into the steep hills by glaciers. The weather was beautiful and we were able to look at the mussel rafts in the water. We could also see sheep grazing on the hillsides. The farmers just let them loose and around this part of Ireland there arent even fences keeping sheep in certain paddocks.

Back to Galway for the afternoon to have some free time to walk around sightseeing or shopping for souvenirs.
There is a little fishing village outside of Galway called Claddagh which is where the ring comes from. The Claddagh symbol is two hands clasping a heart with a crown above. The heart represents 'love', the hands 'friendship' and the crown is for 'loyalty'.

Went out to hear some more Irish music at Galway. Only a few of us went as our hotel is slightly outside the city centre so it's not really that walkable.
We were trying more Irish beers... I had to have a laugh cos there's one called
'Galway hooker'. Our tour guide was talking about a hooker convention when we drove through one of the fishing village towns. We all thought it was terrible funny when he was talking about the annual hooker convention.
So I had to try the Galway hooker beer but i didnt really like it. Found an Irish cider i do like though called Bulmers.

on tap... i can say that i had a Galway hooker!

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Ireland Tour Day 4

Mon 18th Oct

Today we left Killarney for Galway.
First stop was the Foynes Flying Boat Museum along the river Shannon. Ok it might sound boring... at first i thought it would be cos i'm not really a plane enthusiast. One of ROI's airports is called Shannon and short flights out of the country leave from here (e.g. ROI to Spain or ROI to London). The old site of air traffic used to be Foynes but there was no runway but the boats would take off from the water - hence flying boats.

In the 1930's and early 1940's, transatlantic flights from the US to Europe landed at Foynes. There is a little museum of information about the planes and flights as well as a recreated model of a flying boat that you can walk around inside.

Foynes also claims to be the home of the original Irish coffee. They are very proud to claim having invented it here. So there was a coffee making demonstration before morning tea.

Next stop after Foynes was Bunratty Village which is on the outskirts of county Limerick. The witty poems called Limericks are said to originate in this county. People used to make them up as a form of entertainment as there was nothing else to do to keep themselves occupied on cold winter nights.

mmm fresh bread...

We only had an hour for lunch but Es and i decided to skip lunch in order to visit the Bunratty castle and Folk park with another young tour member. So the 3 of us did a whirlwind tour of the castle. I liked the Folk park section more and was a bit disappointed not to have had more time to fully explore it. It's very similar to the Welsh park i visited. The history is fascinating and again they have dismantled and reassembled actual dwellings. Had the nicest fresh bread baked on a peat fire... mmmm

Bunratty Castle. Our tour guide said "here in Ireland we catalogue our castles by calling them A,B,C etc... - Another Bloody Castle"

Bothan Scoir - one-room dwelling of a poor landless labourer (17th century)

I'm not sure where this photo was taken but it was somewhere along the way. This sculpture is a memorial for the people who died in the great famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. Ireland's population was around 8 million then and the people largely depended on the potato crop for food. They call it blight which is something like a virus that made all the potatoes rot decimated the crop and about a million people died of starvation (actual figures might be more) and a million people migrated out of the country.
The big tragedy of the situation is Ireland was governed by the UK who stood by and did nothing as people died. But even the Irish people did not help each other. The meat export market was still going strong as people chose to make money exporting rather than feeding their own countrymen. 
The sculpture depicts a skinny boy on the right standing at a door/wall begging to work for food. Whole families were evicted for failing to pay rent. They had no food or shelter. As the parents were dying of starvation they would drop their children off outside workhouses in the hope that the children would be taken in and put to work and more importantly be fed and live. It's hard to see but there is a lady's head poking out a window on the left is telling him there is no room for him. This was a true story and the real little boy died of starvation.

After lunch we went to the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs rise to about 700ft above the Atlantic sea and are along the coast of county Clare. (We are covering quite a bit of ground to go from Kerry county to Limerick to Clare to Galway today!).
The weather decided to take a turn for the worse and it got very windy and a little drizzly when we got there... but the view was still very spectacular.

the pictures dont really do this justice. the sheer size of the cliff faces was breathtaking...

O'Brien's tower. Built in 1835 as a lookout over the cliffs of Moher

Settled for the night in Galway. But Es and i were too tired to go out so just enjoyed a night in. The good thing about staying in the same place for a couple of nights is that tomorrow night we can go out...

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Ireland Tour Day 3

Sun 17th Oct

Off to the Dingle Peninsula today...

Our tour guide is a funny older man i would guess to be in his late 50's... it must be cost cuts but he is doing really well driving the bus as well as giving us commentary on what we are seeing. But he said he has been doing it for ages. He has a rule for the tour... some penalties if you are late... if you are 2 mins late then you will be singing a song... 3 mins you will dance... and 5 mins late then you will be singing and dancing... in the spot where the bus was...
Anyway he kept us entertained with his great jokes all along the way.

First stop was another retail stop. Prices were reasonable at this place and they were good with providing us with tax rebate forms. VAT is like GST in Aust but it's 21%! - foreigners can claim it back upon leaving the country. The highlight of the stop was Irish coffee!!
You generally drink coffee in the mornings right? So trust the Irish to start drinking early by putting whisky in their coffee... but i must admit... it was yummm and i'm not a big coffee drinker!

i just liked the ripple of the sea with the wind...

We drove south along the west coast of Ireland. Stopped for a few photo opportunities as there is some beachside along the coast. Stopped at Dingle harbour for morning tea... the town is plastered with dolphins because in 1984 a dolphin appeared in the harbour. It would welcome the fishing boats into port by escorting them in and would also give divers gifts of fish... They named him 'Fungie'.

typical Irish countryside - lots of sheep!!

The fog over the countryside this morning actually reminded me of scenes in the movie "Far and Away" with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. How funny that later when i read the tour outline i found that some of the movie was shot here in the Dingle Peninsula. There's also another movie that was shot here called "Ryan's Daughter" but i've never seen it cos i think it might be an older movie.

primitave hut in south Kerry..  the Blasket people might have lived in similar huts

The Dingle Peninsula is in a county called Kerry which is the most south-western county in ROI. There are little islands off the coast of Ireland closest to the town of Dunquin and these are called the Blasket Islands. We went to visit the Blasket centre to learn about the history of the islands.

Basically the inhabitants of the islands lived in primitave huts on the islands and led quiet lives fishing and farming. The population of the biggest island which is the Great Blasket Island never rose above about 150 and the islands havent been inhabited since 1953. The islands are quite isolated due to weather and tidal conditions but it was a nice,clear day so we could actually see the Great Blasket Island.

They speak only Irish on the islands. There is great pride in the literary works of 3 of the island's authors. In a collection of short stories, they tell the tales of the life of the people living on the islands. These books have been translated into a few languages and are important to the Irish speaking people as they show some of the culture and values of Ireland.

Back to the hotel around 4pm for some free time. Killarney is a big tourist town so the shops are open till around 6pm. Es and i took a walk around town poking our heads into some souvenir shops.

more beer at O'Donoghues... and the Irish love their Guinness

After dinner we were pretty knackered but still wanted to experience some Irish nightlife... so we ended up just hanging out at the bar attached to the hotel called O'Donoghues. About half of our tour group thought similarly so we actually had quite a big group.

We also bumped into the other Irish Spirit tour bus there. Basically the tour i'm on is called the Irish Spirit tour as it is meant to go to the places that show the history and more traditional side of Ireland. So we visit a celtic crystal factory as opposed to the Waterford crystal factory. There just so happens to be another tour bus shadowing us on the same tour. There are 47 of them in a very full bus whereas we are only 24 which i think is nice. Plenty of spare seats to stretch out on.
So there were some interesting characters from the other bus. They were all quite nice but one guy was particularly loud and i'll always remember him as "O'neill" because he was commenting on Es's shirt which had the logo of the surfie brand O'Neill on it....
The funny part of the night was our older grandma 'R'... she was requesting some songs from the musicians and talking quite animatedly to them for a while... but in our eyes she was chatting up some young blokes yet again and we had to tease her about it for the rest of the trip...

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Ireland tour Day 2

Sat 16th Oct

Today we left Dublin early in the morning. One thing i dont like about being on tour is the early starts. You put your luggage outside the door at 6:45am before you go to breakfast. The porters take it down and load it onto the bus before you leave.

Drove through the Irish countryside... the first thing I noticed is lots and lots of sheep... one might think you were in New Zealand...

So we drove through Tipperary (and i do know some of the song...) to the Rock of Cashel. The Rock is basically a big mound of rock... kinda like Ayers rock but smaller. It is said that here the King of Munster (the king of that region) in the 5th century was converted to Christianity by St. Patrick. It is the site of subsequent crownings. The most significant was Brian Boru (crowned in 977) who battled and drove the Vikings out of Ireland or the anglo-norsk people to the outskirts of Dublin.

On the site there were ruins of a 12th century chapel, a 13th century cathedral and a 15th century castle. Poked around the ruins a bit and were told a bit about the history of each.

It's funny to learn about religious relics... I'm not superstitious enough to believe in these things. The site is host to the cross of St. Patrick which is an old sandstone weatherworn cross. It has now been taken down and put under the shelter in the old castle... But it is said to have mystical properties. For example... the person who wraps their arms around it and can make their fingers meet will be blessed with never having dental problems. And the young woman who hops around is 9 times will be blessed with marriage... So I had to take a silly photo with me pretending to hop but there is no way i would want to waste my energy...

Then we drove to county Cork. The Republic of Ireland (ROI) has 26 counties and Northern Ireland has 6 but they belong to the UK. Cork is the southernmost county of the ROI. We stopped at the Blarney Woollen Mills for lunch and it was also a shopping stop. At first we thought that there would be wool demonstrations - knitting or weaving etc... but it's basically the southern Irish equivalent of a department store. A good place for souveniors but we were to find out that it was also a pricey tourist trap.

What wasnt in the tour was the Blarney Castle. The tour guide actually sounded quite negative in his description. There were a lot of people on our tour who were older and might not have been able to walk or make the climb up the narrow stairs in the castle. But Es and I arent in wheelchairs yet and so we decided to go kiss the Blarney stone... cos it's apparently what tourists do...

There are several legends concerning the Blarney stone. There is one in which a guy named MacCarthy rescues a young maiden who turns out to be a goddess. She grants him one wish. He has a speech impediment so he asks her to help him. She tells him to kiss a stone... he does and is granted a gift of eloquence. Later the bluestone he kissed is incorporated into the battlements of a castle. Legend says that kissing the stone endows you with the gift of the gab or the ability to create a load of blarney...  blarney = being able to deceive without offending.

Anyway, it's not easy to kiss the stone... it's actually on the outside of the ramparts of the castle. So you climb to the top of the ruined castle looking at all the signs telling you what each space would have been when the castle was intact. Then at the top there is a guy sitting by some rails. You sit on the mat infront of the stone and then grab some metal rails. The guy then lowers you under the castle wall where you see nothing but stone... and kiss it... lol. Most unhygenic but i guess a tourist gotta do what a tourist has gotta do...

They even have a photographer taking shots of you kissing the stone... which they try to sell to you for 10euro for one or 18euro for the 2 shots they take. I could imagine in the days of film cameras they might be wasting a lot of film and have to recover costs but it's digital... methinks it's highway robbery for tourists.

imagine paying 10euro for this headless shot... apparently the true Blarney stone is a long way under the castle and actually more on the outside

Rejoined the rest of the group... and i didnt buy any of the shirts saying stuff like 'I kissed the best' or something crazy like that... We drove to Killarney for the night.

@ the Danny Mann

Our tour guide recommended some local pubs that we could go to hear some Irish music... and do as the Irish do... drink beer...
Ended up going to Sheehans which was packed with young people... bumped into another couple from our tour group there... was pretty happening but quite hot and crowded...
So walked around and went to the other place that was recommended called Danny Mann... there was an Irish folk band playing as well. I think there were more tour groups there as it is also a hotel. There were heaps of old people listening to music with arms folded across their chest. They wouldnt even clap or get into it at all... boo!!

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