Day 1/2?: There is where it gets hazy for me. I don't quite know where/when Day 1 turned into Day 2, but all of a sudden it was Tuesday, I still hadn't gotten any sleep, and we were driving through a foggy morning toward Belfast. About two hours later we arrived in Belfast. By this time I was dizzy, nauseous tired, had a headache, and my back hurt. I just wanted to get out of the bus/van and into our hotel to take a nap, but it was not to be. The hotel wouldn't be ready for another few hours. Aargh!
Paddy drove us around Belfast, along with some other guy whose name I didn't catch. They told us all kinds of fascinating things about Belfast and showed us the Parliament Buildings (picture 1 below) and a bunch of memorials and murals on the walls, illustrating the Troubles (more about that later, pictures 2-4 below), including the Clonard Martyrs Memorial Garden. I am ashamed to admit that at the time I did not pay as much attention to all this as I should have. (Luckily we saw this again later). I was now angry, dizzy, nauseous tired, and would have traded my right arm for a hotel room. I didn't want to see where the Titanic was built or where Bill Clinton stayed when he was in town. I just wanted to take a nap!
Just when I reached my breaking point, and was on the verge of begging Paddy to just drop me off at a park somewhere so I could sleep on a bench, he announced that our hotel was ready. Oh, thank God! We went to the Europa, which happens to be the most bombed building in Europe (apparently the IRA bombed it quite frequently). The guide assured us it hadn't been bombed in at least a few weeks - ha ha. We went up to our room, dropped our bags, and passed out . The wake up call announcing it was happy hour time startled me out of a deep sleep about two and a half hours later. I was much less grouchy after getting some sleep.
We met Donal & Co. across the street from our hotel at a pub named The Crown. The story goes that a married couple, a Protestant husband and a Catholic wife, opened the pub. The wife agreed that the husband could decorate the pub any way he pleased, as long as she could design the entrance. She designed the floor of the entrance out of tile, with a crown being designed right in front of the door, so that anyone entering or leaving the pub had to walk on the crown (the significance of which I would understand later). The place is amazing inside - you should google image search it, as I can not do it justice with mere words. This is where I had my first pint of Guinness in Ireland! So creamy and delicious!
We went back to the hotel for dinner, then back across the street to a bar in the back of Robinsons (another pub across the street from our hotel) called Fibber Macgees. Fibber Magees was cool - it looked exactly like you think an Irish pub would look like. The pubs in Ireland are different than American bars - there are just stools and tables everywhere, and you can just move them around wherever you want. If there are empty stools by you, strangers will just sit down and talk to you. The local people we met here were very friendly - they want to know about where you are from, where you are visiting in Ireland, and your family. No one is sitting around on their iPhones, looking at their Facebook or texting. They are actually just enjoying the company of the people they are with. It was nice. There was a really good band playing traditional Irish music. The guy playing the fiddle and the flute was amazing - I have never heard anything like it. Everyone in the pub was clapping their hands and singing along, and people were dancing. It was so fun!
Around 11:30 pm we called it a night. Exhausted from a long, long day, we went back to the Europa, prayed it wouldn't get bombed, and fell fast asleep, already in love with Ireland!
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