Everything's big in Belfast

- June 08, 2019

City Hall in Belfast

Our next stop is Belfast, Northern Ireland, birthplace of The Titanic. It is odd to think that Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom. The Pound Sterling is the currency of choice. Tomorrow as we go into Ireland, we will revert back to the Euro because The Republic of Ireland is part of the European Union. It is not necessarily a good situation here. By that I mean that there is still a little tension and turmoil that goes back to the time of the "Troubles". That is what they call the time of division and fighting back in the late sixties. It lasted about 3 decades, and there is still an under current of bad blood with some folks. It is definitely better now though. The border between Northern Ireland and Ireland to the south is what they call a transparent border that the two nations pass thru freely and without checks. But should Great Britain withdraw from the EU, the border will become a "hard" border and a lot of things will have to change. We will have to see what happens.

Port in Belfast with the famous "Samson & Goliath" cranes
used for their world renowned shipbuilding and more recently
used in building the "Game of Thrones" sets

Today, we are on our way to the Giant's Causeway. This incredible natural phenomenon lies on the sea coast on the edge of the Antrim plateau in Northern Ireland. It is made up of some 40,000 octagonal shaped basalt columns which were created by ancient volcanic fissure eruptions. Some of the columns are so perfectly symmetrical that you would swear they were built by precision machinery but they are all natural. The pictures will tell you a much better story than I can so take a look. It is, of course, just another of the incredible World Heritage Sites that we have been fortunate enough to have seen on this trip. One right after another.

Very close by the Causeway is Royal Portrush Golf Glub. It is home to the 2019 Open this July. Grandstands and preparations were already being put in place as it is a huge tournament to these folks here and one of the four Majors on the PGA schedule every year. We are obviously very close to the birthplace of golf, and these folks take it quite seriously. Could only see it from the bus so we didn't get a lot of good shots of it.

Royal Portrush Golf Club - Home of the Open

The midieval Dunluce Castle is next door to the golf course

Something else that came from this vicinity is the Patron Saint of Ireland....Patrick. On or around 432 AD he is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland.

While Northern Ireland is pretty much the industrial leader when you talk about Ireland, agriculture is still very important here. Green field after green field after rolling green fields after more rolling green fields are dotted with sheep, cattle and other livestock. When people tell you how green it is here, they are not kidding. Do you remember Johnny Cash's song called Forty Shades of Green? His inspiration for that song came from when he visited Ireland. But in between all that green are hedgerows of yellow. It is called Gorse. It smells very good but it is also very thorny. Not much eats it and so it grows everywhere. Kind of like our Kudzu.

We got back from our tour and still had a couple hours before the ship took off so Vialula and I hopped aboard the Ho-Ho bus and went downtown to catch a little dinner and have a cold one. We walked around and I must say the choices of local pubs is just about endless. We had heard of the Crown Liquor Saloon Bar and so we made our way there. It has been around since 1826 and was very authentic. The place was booming but we made our way to the bar and ordered some drinks. We are in the home of Guinness so that is what I had. It is served cold and heavy and went down quite easily. By that time it was a little past 8:00 on a Saturday night and just about every pub had finished serving food and concentrated on just the alcohol. So we walked around to several more places and by 9:00 we had just about decided that our only hope was fast food. Believe it or not but there was a KFC in front of us so we just kind of decided that we would settle on that. As we are coming up to the front door, it burst open and this guy comes flying out with the help of the local KFC bouncer or something. What do you have to do to get thrown out of a KFC?? I guess we will never know because we just turned around and walked off. Back on the ship we settled for room service.

Anyway, Belfast was great and someplace we would return to. So tomorrow we are off to the other Ireland where the leprechauns and fairies live. I suspect we will see much more rolling green hills and a pub or two so we are looking forward to our last 2 stops. Tomorrow is Dublin, then Cork and then Bantry. See you there.