Belfast!

Okay, this is the third time I've written this. The internet keeps eating this post. So, I shall try again... Our last day, we hung out in Belfast, before heading back to London. This was like, a month ago. Ooh, it was Mel's bday that day. Which means this post is more than a month old. Crazy.

We left the house late, becauase after staying up late to watch all of Spaced, everyone slept in. I woke up at 9 and we didn't leave until 2, after I had a fit and yelled and swore and stomped outside. Okay, super whiney, but it worked.

Belfast is a pretty city, but not very touristy, compared to Dublin and especially London. Given the violence (in the past and recently).


So we wandered around, with Kristian playing tour guide. We saw the super pretty Queens College and wandered thru the downtown area, stopping at a super cool pub that had walled-in booths with closeable doors. Very cool.

This reads: Welcome to Loyalist East Belfast

In Belfast, the sectarian divisions are still really obvious in the not-as-prolific-as-expected grafitti and the flags. On lamposts on many of the streets, including K&A's, there are flags, a la the ones that go up pre-Stampede in Calgary. But rather than images of broncos and Pepsi logos, these have sectarian symbols, such as the rather ominous tolkien-sounding red hand of Ulster. Those are the legal flags. Some posts also illegally fly the flag of the Ulster Volunteer Forces.

For example, this is the courthouse. In London, the major court is the Old Bailey, which has no fence around it and is open to the public (I've been there.) In Belfast, the court is not just fenced but walled, and has watchtowers, barbed wire and cctv on par with a maximum security prison.

Anyways. Then we got a cab to the airport, and M/T/M slept in Gatwick as their flight home was in the morning, and I took a rambling route home, via the train and several buses, and arrived in my flat at 3am... and woke up for work at 6am...

More photos: http://njkobie.dotphoto.com/CPViewAlbum.asp?AID=2789020

. . .

And that, my friends, is the last of that trip... thank god, eh? I'll start writing about more recent things now...