Norn Iron
We survived our 3-day whirlwind tour of Northern Ireland! The Paddywagon tour was pretty good, the only thing we have to complain about really was the hostels. Especially in Belfast - "J.J from New York", the hostel owner, was pretty psychotic. He stomped around swearing his head off for about 3 hours straight last night, and when I finally stuck my head out and asked him to keep it down, he swore at me and "reckoned he could do what he wanted". It was pretty sketchy.So our tour started in Dublin and headed north with a couple neat stops at Drogheda, where we saw a 300 year old decapitated head in a glass box. Oh yeah, this was in a church, right next to the altar. Poor Oliver Plunkett has to suffer thousands of tourists peering at his noggin now, but I feel more sorry for the people trying to worship in the church. Kind of a weird attraction if you ask me.
After that we stopped in a beautiful graveyard that is built at the site of an old monastery ("Monistaire Boies" in Gaelic), and the site of the largest Celtic Cross in Ireland, and one of the round towers that the monks used to hide in when the Vikings came plundering.
We spent the night in Derry ("Ireland's most historic city"), which is a pretty fascinating place. It's where Bloody Sunday occurred, and is still the site of much conflict. The river divides the Catholics and the Protestants, but the conflict is less about religion than it is about ousting the British rule. Oh, and Seamus Heaney was born there....
Next day we went to the Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-reed rope bridge. Despite the complete lack of any giants, the Causeway is probably the biggest highlight of the tour for me. Rocks in cool shapes? Sign me up! Some pics are below.
After that we spent our last day in Belfast, which wasn't too enjoyable, but we did an interesting tour of the murals and the "Peace Wall". The Peace wall is essentially Belfast's very own Berlin wall - again, Catholics on one side, Protestants on the other. We saw them building massive piles of wood for the Orangeman Marches in the summer (where the Protestants burn effigies of the pope) and the headquarters of Sinn Fein, and stood in the heart of the neighborhoods controlled by the UFF & UDA. Pretty crazy stuff.
Okay, some pictures - first one is me at the giant's causeway, second one is a mural in belfast, third one is the coast of ireland near the Carrick-a-reed bridge, fourth is our tour group and the fifth is michelle at the Giant's Causeway.
posted by Michelle @ 7:57 PM
3 Comments:
Those are some hot... basalt columns. Yeah! You would have had fun at God's Pocket with Jeff and Barry, they were investigating the "mystery of the Bonanza group", and took kayaks out to go find the "contact".
Enjoy driving on the left! It's kind of scary at first, but you get used to it pretty fast.
Oh yeah, what does "Norn Iron" mean?
'norn iron' is essentially the pronounciation of 'northern ireland.' although the accent does vary greatly even town to town.
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