Travel

We had a great experience on our tour to the Cliffs of Moher, so we chose to use Paddywagon again for our day trip tour to Belfast. Our tour guide for this trip was Sean, a former police officer with the Gardaí (the Irish police force). Sean explained a bit about his own background – he worked as a human trafficking investigator for the United Nations before becoming a detective for the Gardaí and ultimately retiring as a sergeant. 

During the ride to Belfast, Sean primarily spoke about the Troubles – the conflict between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that took place in the late 1900s. Sean was incredibly knowledgeable about the Troubles and it was interesting to learn about the conflict from his perspective as someone who not only grew up in that time period, but someone who also served on the police force.

Sean shared the historical context of the Troubles, personal anecdotes of things he remembered from growing up during that time, as well as stories about members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland who hide the fact that they are police officers for fear of attacks by terrorist groups.  

A brief history of the Troubles 

The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict that mostly took place in Northern Ireland and lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to when the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. Described as a “low-intensity conflict,” the Troubles were a political and nationalistic conflict fought over the status of Northern Ireland. Unionists and loyalists (who were mostly Ulster Protestants) wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom, while Irish nationalists and republicans (who were mostly Irish Catholics) wanted Northern Ireland to leave the UK and join a united Ireland. 

Although there were many events that can be attributed to the starting point of the Troubles, the catalyzing event occurred in Derry (also known as Londonderry), where the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association organized a march to end discrimination against the Catholic minority by the Protestant government. The march was banned when unionists announced that they would be staging a counter-demonstration, but the NICRA decided to carry out their protest anyway. Rioting quickly erupted after the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the police force in Northern Ireland at the time) violently suppressed the protesters with batons and a water cannon. 

Increasing tensions led to the deployment of British troops in Northern Ireland in what would become the British Army’s longest operation. Some Catholics initially welcomed the British Army as a more “neutral force” than the Royal Ulster Constabulary, but they soon came to see it as hostile and invasive after Bloody Sunday in 1972. 

Also known as the Bogside Massacre and one of the landmark events during the Troubles, Bloody Sunday occurred when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry on January 30, 1972. Many victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers, while some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Some protestors were injured by shrapnel, rubber bullets, or batons; two were run down by British Army vehicles; and others were beaten. Who fired the first shot remained a point of contention for many years, as the British Army maintained that it had fired only after being fired upon. It was later concluded that the demonstrators fired the first shot, but none of those who were shot dead appeared to have carried weapons.

The Troubles as a whole were marked by street fighting, sensational bombings, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and internment without trial. Major participants included the British army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the Ulster Defence Regiment (from 1992 called the Royal Irish Regiment). The latter’s purpose was to play a peacekeeping role between the nationalist Irish Republican Army (IRA), who viewed the conflict as a “guerrilla war for national independence,” and the unionist paramilitary forces, which “characterized the IRA’s aggression as terrorism.” 

Later, a splinter group of the IRA known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (also referred to as Provos), would emerge as the champion of Northern Ireland’s nationalists. The official IRA would undertake a ceasefire in 1972 and cede the title of the IRA to the Provos. According to Jeff Wallenfeldt, “Believing that their fight was a continuation of the Irish War of Independence, the Provos adopted the tactics of guerrilla warfare.”

Over the 30 years of conflict, 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 were wounded before a peaceful solution. The Good Friday Agreement (also known as the Belfast Agreement) was reach on April 10, 1998 and, according to Wallenfeldt, provided the “creation of a power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, established an institutional arrangement for cross-border cooperation between the governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland on a range of issues, and laid the groundwork for continued consultation between the British and Irish governments.” 

In May, Ireland and Northern Ireland held a joint referendum on the agreement, which was approved by 94 percent of those who voted in the republic and 71 percent of those voting in Northern Ireland, where Catholic approval (at 96 percent) was higher than Protestant (52 percent).

Exploring Belfast 

One of the options that we had when we got to Belfast was taking a Black Taxi tour of the Falls and Shankill Roads, along with the infamous political murals and the “Peace Lines” or the walls that separated Irish Nationalist and British Loyalist neighborhoods. Many of the local Black Taxi drivers lived through the worst of the Troubles and recount incredible stories of urban warfare and tragedy during the tour to help people better understand the conflict.

While this tour sounded incredibly enticing, due to the limited amount of time we had in Belfast, Lindsey and I opted to explore the city on our own instead. (Also, I should note that I get extremely carsick, so the idea of being in another moving vehicle for another hour-and-a-half to two hours sounded like torture to me, despite how interesting the tour itself sounded.) 

We started off at Belfast City Hall, which is where the bus dropped us off and where we would reconvene in just two short hours. Lindsey and I headed inside to use the restrooms and to wander around the permanent exhibit on the first floor, which encompasses 16 separate rooms and offers a journey from Belfast’s past to present. Part of Belfast City Hall is closed to the public, so we weren’t able to go upstairs, but the view of the grand staircase from the main floor and the incredible, intricate work prominent on the ceiling of the dome gave us pause.

After City Hall, we walked around the city, taking in the views and the vibes. We were hoping to have enough time to take a bus down to the Belfast Botanic Gardens, which are located just outside of Queen’s University Belfast, in South Belfast. But considering that we had a strict two-hour timeline to adhere to, and given that the bus ride from City Hall to the Botanic Gardens was a half an hour one-way, we weren’t optimistic that we were going to have enough time to see everything we wanted to see and make it back in time for the bus. 

While walking around Belfast, we popped in and out of some shops, including a few cute vintage shops that had things like band tees, vintage jeans, and lots of camouflage military jackets (I’m assuming left over from the Troubles). 

We worked our way over to Castle Street, where we popped into Cafe Red (a hidden gem!) for a quick bite before we made our way back to City Hall to board the bus and head towards the Titanic Museum. 

The Titanic Museum

The Titanic was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, located on Queen’s Island in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The museum, built on the former site of the shipyard, is built in the angular shape of ships’ prows, with the main “prow” angled down the middle of the Titanic and Olympic slipways towards the River Lagan. 

The exterior of the building is covered in individual silver aluminum shards, and the building itself stands at 126 feet tall, the same height as the Titanic’s hull. That might not mean much to you, but when you’re standing directly in front of it, you get a little more perspective regarding how truly massive the ship was. 

The Titanic Experience at the Titanic Museum is a self-guided one-way route that takes visitors through boomtown Belfast and the shipyard where the liners were built, to the launch, its maiden voyage, and the sinking, aftermath, and quest to find the Titanic.

We had two hours allotted to walk through the Titanic Museum, but I think that 60-90 minutes would have been enough, depending on the person. The museum itself was as engaging as it could possibly be, given the contents. There were elements of the museum that were simultaneously solemn and also interesting to experience, such as the interactive screen where you could search the names of those who were on the Titanic’s maiden voyage. Towards the end of the museum experience, there was also a room with a display of personal items from some survivors and some people who perished along with the Titanic, as well as an original life vest from the tragedy. 

I learned a lot at this museum, but one of the things that struck me the most was that the lifeboats were being dispatched before they were even full, meaning that many more people could have survived if there was a better emergency system in place. After the wreck, recommendations were issued by the British and American Boards of Inquiry stating that ships should carry enough lifeboats for all aboard and mandatory lifeboat drills would be conducted prior to setting sail. 

Furthermore, the United States government passed the Radio Act of 1912, which stated that radio communications on passenger ships would be operated 24 hours per day. This came after the discovery that the SS Californian – which was the closest ship to the Titanic at approximately 14-20 miles away – failed to receive or respond to the Titanic’s distress call since its wireless operator had turned off the radio receiver and gone to bed for the night. 

Dinner with a new friend

After the two-hour drive back to Dublin, we made our way back over to the Temple Bar area to meet our new friend, Teaghan, for dinner at Lundy Foot’s. We met Teaghan on our Cliffs of Moher bus tour and learned that she hails from New Zealand, but had been traveling around Europe for a couple of months on her own. 

We had so much fun at dinner and we loved learning about Teaghan’s life in New Zealand and her travels across Europe. Also, it was just a lot of fun to queen out, eat dinner with a fellow 20-something girl, and talk about our favorite parts of Dublin and Ireland as a whole. We also discussed the differences in dialects when ordering dinner – for example, Lindsey and I both said “I’ll get the …” while Teaghan said “I’ll grab the …” 

As far as the vibe of Lundy Foot’s goes, we enjoyed it immensely. There was an older gentleman playing guitar and singing about six feet away from us, so we were able to enjoy some traditional Irish music and ambience while we ate. The overall vibe of the restaurant was super warm and cozy, with dim lighting and warm, white lights strung around the perimeter of the restaurant. 

I ordered the beef & Guinness stew, which was the best meal I had on our entire trip. It was served with 12-hour braised beef in Guinness, onions, mushrooms, carrots, and turnips, with a sizable spoonful of creamy mashed potatoes right in the center. It was so good and also one of the few truly Irish dishes I had while we were in Ireland. Lindsey ordered the pasta carbonara, which she said was delicious and really hit the spot, as she had been craving a good pasta dish.

Overall, the food and the vibes at Lundy Foot’s was a 10 out of 10 – we were only sad that we hadn’t discovered it sooner!