Northern Ireland Weekend

This past weekend I went with IFSA-Butler to Northern Ireland. We stayed in Belfast and went on a day trip to Derry and the Giant’s Causeway on Friday. I didn’t realize how beautiful the City Centre of Belfast is, especially at night. I tried to take a lot of pictures of the city hall and other buildings all lit up, but a lot of them didn’t turn out. Derry was also very interesting, because I didn’t know much of its history. It is often known as Londonderry, but right now there is a Catholic majority on the city council. Despite being by far the minority, Protestants always managed to be in control of the city, making Derry a prime battlefield in the Troubles. The tour guide told us that Catholic paramilitary groups were always very careful to wait to set off bombs they had planted until the buildings were evacuated, so they never had any casualties. He took us on a tour around the city walls which make Derry the only remaining walled city in Ireland, mostly because the walls were useless—they were too low to protect buildings from cannon fire.
Along the way to the Causeway, we stopped at Dunluce Castle, which is by far the biggest castle I have seen so far. You could also climb pretty much anywhere on it, although you have to be careful of the strong wind and sudden drop-off into the ocean. The Giant’s Causeway was spectacular, but my camera eats batteries and gave out halfway through. I’m hoping to borrow other people’s pictures to post.
The next day I we went on a bus tour of Belfast. It’s easy to forget how recently peace has come to Ireland, even in the Republic, but I was constantly hit with reminders in Belfast. On the tour we passed countless buildings surrounded by barbed wire, and the driver would inform us of the new buildings that can be made of glass now that they don’t have to worry about car bombs. The hotel down the street was bombed the second most out of any buildings in the world. I assumed that in the past decade or so everything had more or less settled down—Belfast is safe, tourism is back and the Protestant and Catholic sides of town get along with few disagreements, but there are still signs of the Troubles. The peace walls to prevent rock-throwing between neighborhoods still stand at the behest of the residents, and more are still being erected. The tour bus couldn’t go down a street on its usual route because of an Orangemen parade, and of course everywhere there were murals glorifying the paramilitary groups of both sides. We wandered around for a while trying to find the house Van Morrison grew up in (one of my friends is a big fan), but everyone was very nice in giving us directions.
Now I'm back to Maynooth for the second half of the semester. My Tain class is finished, which means I have a total of 4 classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Tuesdays are a bit ridiculous, with 6 hours of class when I have my tutorial.
I've finally posted more pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/Clara.D.Coughlin/LondonAndNorthernIreland?authkey=VvIxi9K1deY