Belfast etc.

This past weekend was our IFSA-Butler sponsored Northern Ireland trip. After piling on a bus and taking a 5-hour drive north, we arrived at our destination of Jury's Inn at Belfast. Post-unpacking we headed downstairs for a nice (free) dinner before the pub. We drank in mine and Megan's room for a bit before heading out to a pub called Robinson's down the street for some traditional music. The band was a lot of fun, and it was a good time dancing around while all of the old women stared at us (crazy Americans).
On Friday morning we got up nice and early for a bus tour. After getting out of the city, we drove into the countryside; it is insanely gorgeous, with the green rolling hills and the mountains looming behind them. After stopping in a small town in County Antrim to look around for a bit we drove along the coastline to Carrick-a-rede. The Northern Ireland coast road wound us around the Irish Sea so that we could see both the water and The Glens (mountains in Co. Leitrim) and valleys. The sights were nothing like I imagined Ireland would be, but they were nonetheless amazing.
Once we arrived at Carrick-a-rede, we took a hike up the coast to the famous Carrick-a-rede rope bridge. The walk up was breathtaking; everything was green and lush (as it should be in Ireland) and the ocean was the green-blue that you only see in movies. The walk itself is a tourist attraction, and for me it was one of the prettiest things I have seen thus far in Ireland. The rope bridge is suspended 30 meters over the water and connects the mainland to this tiny island just off the coast. Being that I am terrified of heights, it was a huge accomplishment for me to walk across. After coming back across the bridge, we walked around a little more and as we were leaving we saw a beautiful rainbow over the sea. No trip to Ireland is complete without one.
After lunch at the Ramada hotel in Portrush, we went off to Dunluce castle. The castle, home to the McDonnells in the fourteenth century, sits on a cliff overlooking the Irish waters. While much of the castle was destroyed, we were still able to see what the basic structure of it was, as many of the walls were still standing.
Our last stop of the day was at the famous Giant's Causeway. Legend has it that the stones were created by an Irish giant known as Finn, and that there had once been an entire causeway that stretched all the way to the coast of Scotland (which you can see from the causeway). The story is that a Scottish giant (whose name escapes me) came across to Ireland to fight Finn, but then saw Finn's child and how big he was and ran all the way back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway as he ran. Scientifically, the stones on the causeway are explained by three lava outflows that were subjected to accelerated cooling, resulting in columns of hexagonal rocks that taper off into the ocean. By the time we got to Giant's causeway, the weather started to take a turn for the worse and we were hit by rain and wind. This being the case, the waves on the coast got much bigger, resulting in more than a few people getting soaked. As intense as it was, the causeway itself was amazing.
Friday night the group from UL (my group) and a group from the University College at Dublin ended up hanging out in the hotel for awhile before getting in trouble with security for "being too loud," so we decided to go to Robinson's again. A small group of us ended up at some really sketchy club somewhere in Belfast, and we weren't there for more than an hour before the boys we were with got freaked out by the guys at the club who were following around, so we decided to call it a night.
On Saturday we took our time getting up in the morning and went to St. George's market, which is this great indoor farmer's market in Belfast. We must have spent at least three hours there, looking around at the different crafts and sampling all types of food. I had a GREAT cheeseburger while I was there, which was awesome because I had been craving one for awhile. After the farmer's market we stopped at the mall for a little bit to kill time before our Black Cab tour. There was a fashion show going on, so we watched that and then went back to the hotel.
Our Black Cab tour started later that afternoon. Apparently, it is the only way to see the real Belfast, and having taken that tour I can now see why. Our cab drivers took us in groups of six not to see the "touristy" sights, but to see and explain the Troubles between the Catholics and the Protestants. The first part of our tour was on the Protestant side of the city, which seemed to make our cab drivers not too happy. (Although they said that their job was not to be biased, we could all pretty much tell they were Catholics.) They took us to a townhouse complex on the Protestant side, where there are giant murals painted on the ends of each building. One we saw was for a man known as "Top Gun" who died in 2000, who was allegedly a serial killer. It is said that he killed one Catholic per week for 4 years before he finally died of a cocaine overdose, but in the Protestant community, he is a hero. Other murals depicted historical figures such as Oliver Cromwell, who believed that Catholicism was not a religion but a political power and should therefore be crushed. Once we left the townhouse complex, we were driven to the memorial garden, where the names of Catholic soldiers and civillians who were killed by Protestants were listed. The tour guides showed us the giant rubber bullets that were used in the killings of some of these people, which was very eerie to me. Down the street we went to see a mural of Bobby Sands, who was the leader of one of the hunger strikes as part of the Republican Movement. There was also another mural dedicated to other men who partook and died in those hunger strikes. We also visited the wall that separates the Catholic side of Belfast from the Protestant side, known as the Peace Walk. All of us had the opportunity to sign the wall in hopes that some day the groups will see the support that is behind peacemaking. The final stop of the Black Cab tour was at the international mural wall, which contains several murals about Americans and George Bush (shown in my photo album). There isn't as much anti-Americanism right now, however, because Obama has come into office and the Irish are very optimistic about his time in office.
That night a few of us went out to a pub at the Botanic Gardens Hotel for a few drinks. Nothing really special happened, except for some Irish boy around our age puking in a pint glass. I thought it was funny, but I decided to try to play mom and got him a glass of water and then another empty pint glass. It didn't really do much though because he got kicked out about five minutes later.

I have put two albums of pictures on Facebook from this trip:
Chapter 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2009821&id=1083330009&l=d4a54
Chapter 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2009824&id=1083330009&l=65fb9

This weekend I am off to Paris, so I will let you all know how that goes when I can!

I've saved this best picture for last:

This is the view of the Irish Sea from the walk around Carrick-a-Rede.