Belfast via Glenariff Forest Park

Tuesday, 3 September 2019

Another good night sleep.  We aren't in too much of a hurry today.  We have a 2 hour drive and one stopat Glenariff Forest Park on the way to Belfast.  We got up, ate breakfast, and packed up the car. We were on the road just after 10 AM.

​Another beautiful drive along the ocean.

We drove about 1.5 hours and arrived at Glenariff Forest Park.  Rick Steves suggested the 2 mile Waterfall Trail, so that's what we set off to do.  Here are the incredible photos of this green and lush area.

Find Timmy

Tim continues photographing flowers:

It was a beautiful 2 mile hike that took us under 1 hour to complete.  It was definitely worth the stop.

The GPS says that we will make it to Belfast just before 2 PM.  The hotel check-in is at 3 PM, but we head that way anyway thinking that we could park the car and go explore the city before checking in.

On the road we passed this 3 wheeled vehicle on a trailer.  We have only seen this vehicle on American Pickers.  Tim quickly grabbed the camera and shot this photo.

If anyone knows Tim, you would know that he loves anything having to do with the Titanic.  With this in mind, I splurged with our lodging tonight and booked a room at the Titanic Hotel Belfast which is across the street from where the Titanic was built and is in the same building that the Titanic was actually drawn up and designed.

​Needless to say, he was very happy.

Our fancy Titanic room

Way nice bathroom

View of the Titanic Experience Museum out our window

Since we splurged on the hotel room, we decided to splurge on a taxi tour of the city.  This tour is going to tell us about the "Troubles" between the Protestant and the Catholics.  It will be similar to our self-guided walking tour of Derry, but this time we will have a local tell us the story.

Our tour guide Al made sure to tell us that he was Protestant, but his children married Catholics and his grandchildren are being raised Catholic.  He also said that he hasn't voted in the past 30 years.  This was all to set us up to think that he was telling the story from a neutral point of view.  Got it....lets get to the tour.

First stop is the Protestant side of the city.  There is a large mural of King William the Orange, the Protestant that came into the country in 1690 and defeated King James the second (Catholic) at the River Boyne.

Across the way and facing the William the Orange mural is a mural of Stephen McKeag.  He is responsible for many brutal killings of Catholics and Republicans and to many is considered a terrorist.

We were then driven to the "Peace Wall."  This wall was built to protect the Catholics from the Protestants.  I guess the tradition is to sign the wall.  Al had a pen ready for us to use.

This mural shows other places where there are issues that Belfast sympathizes with.

Check out this house on right on the Catholic side of the wall.  It has a fence over its back windows and patio.

Here is one of the most popular murals in Belfast.  A mural of Bobby Sands, the first of the hunger strikers in 1981.

Al told us about this Memorial commemorating the "Dog Squad".  One of the most deadly of the IRA squads of the time.

One last stop to see a wall of murals from worldwide organizations that sympathize with the troubles of Northern Ireland.  

Feelings of the current leaders of UK?

After about 1.5 hours the tour came to an end and Al dropped us off at a great pub that Tim didn't take a photo of.  We had one beer and headed down the street to the next pub, Kelly's.  We only planned on having one drink, but it started raining so we had another.  

Cool Guinness mural on Kelly's wall

It finally stopped raining, so we went 2 doors down for some fast food like fish and chips which for £7.50.  After eating we walked the 30 minutes back to the hotel.  I don't know who this chef is, but the artwork in amazing.

Albert Clock (1869)

Tunnel under a main street

Giant fish

We crossed back over the river and were now close to the hotel.  We came across this "Game of Thrones" sculpture.  Much of this series was filmed here in Belfast.  There was also this interesting Titanic sculpture.

This is the Nomadic.  We will be touring this tomorow.

We are finally close to home.  This is the Titanic Experience that we will be headed to tomorrow morning.

Finally back to the hotel.  We got a bucket of beer and cooled down a couple of beers we bought last week.  We are happy to return to the room pretty early and enjoy this great room.  The bed is so comfortable.  I can't wait to finish this blog so I can just sink into it and go to bed.  And this that...