This morning was time for a tour of Belfast, before we had a few hours of free time. Our tour took us past the political wall, with its posters painted brightly with various political pictures:
We drove around West Belfast through the various zones where people were fighting each other for years. You can’t see any of that now, though you still see flags of various flavours, including the irish and british, of course. In some places the pavements are even painted red, white and blue. The picture below shows the ‘peace fence’ that was supposed to bring peace between the sides. Didn’t quite work. But that fence is still standing now, and stretches on for quite a distance:
Then it was back to the ‘neutral zone’ of the city centre, with its pretty buildings:
Even some painted walls – but this time selling beer, not politics:
Then the beautiful Merchant hotel, known for having the most expensive cocktail in the world, at GBP 750 a serve, on its menu:
And the leaning clock tower of Belfast, which, unlike the leaning tower of Pisa, has not just the inclination, but also the time ;-)
And then there’s this beautiful building, which looks impressive on the outside, and the inside, til you see it’s actually a supermarket for groceries:
And then there’s the oldest pub in all of Ireland:
I made my way back to the hotel, but couldn’t resist popping into the Crown Pub to take some piccies of the interior:
At 1.30pm we left Belfast behind us, and headed in the direction of the Republic again. Our first stop was at Dundalk, which has the beautiful St Patrick’s cathedral. Unfortunately, there was a funeral in progress, so I couldn’t photograph the lovely interior:
Next stop was the hotel for the night at Kings Court. Now this was something I had been looking forward to the entire trip: a stay at Cabra Castle Hotel. A real castle! The entire rest of the tour had slept outside in the stables (of course these were luxury rooms and suites! Some with four-posters!) but I got to sleep in the actual castle! Yay! I was so excited! I took a couple of photos. OK, OK, OK, I admit it: I took lots of photos:
Fortunately, we had a couple of hours to relax (take photos) before dinner at 7pm. Dinner was really, really good. On a par with the meals in Killarney, I would say. I think everyone enjoyed this place immensely. Too bad it was only one night, but we shouldn’t get used to it anyway!
After dinner, some young girls invited us downstairs to demonstrate Irish dancing (yet again). They were funny (the 21 year old) and cute (the 10 year old). They seemed to be enjoying themselves entertaining us. Charles even got up to demonstrate some clogging which he’d learnt in the States and thought was quite similar to Irish step-dancing:
Then I just had to quickly take some more photos inside the castle before heading off to bed:
Thus ended my second-last day on the tour and our last meal together. Strangely, nobody seemed to want to get a final drink together but all went off to their rooms. Sad, but oh well.
