April 2024 – Page 3 – Peckish Travels

Bob and I endured some very bumpy plane rides and some slow immigration processing in Heathrow but have arrived safely in Belfast. We will be here until Monday morning when we head to Scotland to see some good friends and a sweet dog named Otter. To get here and be able to be out of the country for 4 months, we have gotten/are getting a lot of help from Bob’s sister and her husband for which we are very thankful. Also indebted to Bob’s mom for letting us park our car at her house for the duration of this trip. It takes a village.

After our arrival at the AC hotel about 1:00 pm, via taxi from the airport, we unpacked and then headed to the Visitor’s Center to determine our plans for the rest of the day. It was about a 10 minute walk to the Visitor’s Center.

A view of Odyssey Place, a sports arena and event venue,
from our room. The cranes in the background
are Samson and Goliath, iconic parts of the Belfast skyline.
More on them when we go to the Titanic Museum.

One of the taller buildings we passed
on the way into the city center

The Albert Memorial Tower built in 1869.
It’s Belfast’s own leaning tower.
It’s built of sandstone on reclaimed marshy land
and over the years has become 1.25 meters from vertical.

Belfast City Hall, built in 1906, after Queen Victoria declared Belfast a city in 1888.

We decided to do a Black Cab Tour this afternoon. It was recommended by Rick Steve’s as well as by our taxi driver from the airport. It is a 90 minute cab tour that provides a visual and informative description of some of the happenings during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland (or the North of Ireland as our driver prefers to refer to it.). I’m not even going to begin to try to summarize what we learned (from an admittedly Republican vs. Nationalist or Catholic vs. Protestant perspective) except to say that people have trouble living with other people, people like power, and people can do horrible things to each other. In that regard, it was a sobering tour, and while what we heard was specific to Belfast it has similarities with other conflicts at home and around the world.