To Belfast in heals.

Today we woke up and walked to the train station at 6:30 a.m. We were told to dress up because we were going to a speaker later that day and I made the mistake of not hearing the professor say bring a pair of comfortable shoes to switch out of. I wore a nice cream colored sweater with a red silky shirt underneath and grey pants. My shoes of choice of course were my black pumps. Rachael said it would only be a few block to walk to the station…it was more like eight or ten.

It was so nice to get out of cityscape of Dublin to seeing beautiful green landscapes on the train ride up to Belfast. As we arrived we were greeted by our Belfast tour guide, Michael. The first thing I noticed was his accent. Northern Ireland people tend to have an accent that is harder to understand. He said the phrase “super duper” a lot which made me laugh. Northern Ireland isn’t Ireland. It is a part of the United Kingdom and I think it is hard for people to understand that because technically it is a part of the island. Our first stop was called the peace corner. Northern Ireland has such a monumental history that you can still see signs from its history today. Because of the Catholic/Protestant conflict this prompted many to paint large murals on the side of stores, homes etc. I felt very moved when I saw the high walls that were in place to divide the Protestant/Catholic communities. For a second I felt like I was looking that the Israeli conflict. It was amazing to see high walls at the jails that were used for protection during the times of riots. It is important to note that what I described is not continuous throughout the entire country in fact Center city seemed to be modernized.

After the peace corner, the next stop was the Northern Ireland assembly and the Belfast castle. The Belfast castle has a beautiful view that overlooked Belfast. I can understand why couples go there to have their wedding pictures taken or to go for a stroll on the grounds. I also recall there being many cat statues.

My absolute favorite part of the day was going to the shipyard which was the location where the Titanic was built. Even though there was not much to see it was what was there many years ago that left me with a sense of awe. The group ate lunch in the pump-house. After lunch we met Gerry Patterson, a creative designer from The Belfast Telegraph. He has worked there for 17 years, fourteen of which has been specifically working online. The newspaper’s circulation is 70,000. In Northern Ireland, 40 percent of people have home delivery which the complete opposite from the Republic of Ireland. Also there everyone has access to broadband. He said that 90 percent of high schools have broadband. I found it interesting that they sometimes rewrite headlines of stories that go online. He termed the phrase “Google friendly.” An impressive statistic was that 40 percent of traffic was looking at photos from the photo galleries on their website. The next big step he looks forward is to adding video.

After that we ate dinner at the Morning Star restaurant where I ate fish and chips (fish and French fries). Then we caught the 8:10 p.m. train back to Dublin. It was an eventful day that cause me to only obtain one blister.