From Dublin to Belfast

So Doug and I are midway through our grande adventures in Ireland!  The Blessington clan (mum, dad, sis, bro, and myself) has officially ransacked our way through Dublin, Belfast, the Coastal Causeway, and [London]Derry.  Now settled in a blissfully lush hotel room in Mulingar, I find the time to take a deep breath and debrief.  

Overall, this trip has been thigh deep in political analysis and the in-your-face ramifications of a culture just starting to pick itself back up after years and years of war and conflict.  Arriving in Dublin, there wasn't much culture-shock.  Best described as a European mix of New York and New Orleans, Dublin doesn't really start hopping until 11 or 12 at night.  Still, despite the on-going drunken debauchery, there is still that surprising hustle and on-the-go pace that is reminiscent of the typical New Yorker, barely taking the time to tie their shoe, much less talk to their neighbor on the sidewalk.  Honestly, most of Dublin is a complete blur; after 12 hours traveling overnight with very little sleep, the sites we did manage to see upon arrival, such as the Book of Kells (oldest book in the world--very cool); the original tower of the Dublin Castle, build circa 1200; one of the oldest Korans in the world; and a sip of my first oh-so-delectable IRISH Guiness, just to name a few, all seemed to meld together into one extended blur leading up to my head hitting the pillow in our quaint little hotel.  Still, I managed to grab a couple pics along the way:

The next day, it was upwards and onwards (quite literally)! Here the light-hearted tone of the trip shifted as we entered a city rich with strife, grief, and sore wounds. Upon entering Belfast, it seems rather bright and inviting, your typical English settlement rife with jolly little pubs and the Grande Europa Hotel. The city itself is surrounded by the green hills of Ireland, a surprisingly peaceful landscape.  
However, Belfast itself is actually not even in Ireland;  Republicans refer to the six counties still belonging to England as Northern Ireland, while a Loyalist would call it Ulster or a number of other names that are escaping me at the time.  While in Dublin, an Australian woman suggested we take a "Black Cab" tour, which is essentially this:  a former member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) picks you up in his black cab and carts you around the city, explaining the history of the war, telling stories about what happened and what life was really like, all the while taking you to actual sites throughout Belfast.  

So that is exactly what we did.  To actually try and describe the experience would be rather pointless, at least here and now.  If you would like to know more details, just ask and I would be more than happy to talk with you about them.  However, I will say this:  Imagine sitting in the back of a cab as a former member of the IRA points down a street to the very house where British soldiers sledgehammered down the door in the middle of the night, went upstairs, and shot his brother in the head point blank.  "And just down that way is where they killed my brother," he says, in the same matter-of-fact, no-nonsense Irish twang that has characterized the "tour."  We look, stunned, down the street to the door in question.  Just beyond it stands the Peace Wall, a giant 40-ft tall barrier of steel fencing that separates Protestant Belfast from Catholic Belfast.  

To say this was a powerful moment would be a clear understatement, as would for me to say that I now know and understand everything there is to know about the Troubles of Northern Ireland.  Still, I feel like a giant light has been shown on an area of the world and a peoples that we as Amerians know little to nothing about, separate from BBC propoganda labeling the IRA as "terrorists" and "radicals," when in fact, a closer examination would show something much deeper: an oppressed population blindly fighting their own in search for a better, equal life.

Some more pics of Belfast and the Troubles: