Dublin and Belfast – 27th – 29th August 2017

Slainte’ from Northern Ireland

We arrived in Dublin at 9.30am and were greeted by a very chirpy customs official who wanted to know what the collective term for a group of Sedgwick’s was…a smattering perhaps…he asked. Straight away I knew we were up for good craic in Ireland. A short bus trip later and we arrived in beautiful Trinity College in downtown Dublin.

We couldn’t check in until 2.00pm so Jen had arranged a walking tour starting at 11.00am. We grabbed a coffee and found our way to the Town Hall. We were pretty exhausted by now but we had to push on. Our tour guide told us about the history of the castle, a bit about the town and we walked and checked out some cathedrals and Temple Bar. He told us about some of the colourful characters such as Darcy Kelly who ran a brothel and a bar in the cathedral…awesome. She flourished until she got preggers by the Sheriff of Dublin and he did the only thing available to him at the time…he burnt her at the stake for being a witch!! FFS! The tour was interesting but some of the drunk street people were wretched and it was a wee bit depressing. We cut out early in Trinity and caught a mini-bus to the student accommodation dorm and crashed for a few hours.

That evening we walked around the River Liffey and had some dinner and a few pints of Guinness – including Guinness Pale Ale; that was basically a blond stout – before we crashed. We didn’t bust our guts seeing Dublin as we are having two days here at the end of the Paddywagon tour, in 6 days.

Early next morning we walked over to Paddy’s Palace and met our crew and bus driver for our 6 day tour of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Rory, our driver was a loud, piss funny Irish lad, and de craic was a’ plenty wid dis lad!! Most of our tour group are Aussie chicks and we fit in pretty well straight up. We have the obligatory Seppo’s, Indians, Canadians and Kiwi’s, and there are different tours running on this rig, ranging from 1 day all the way through to 6 days.

Anyway we hit the road and our first stop was the ancient burial ground in Monasterboice where we saw the largest Celtic crosses in Ireland. These beauties stand at around 8 meters high and are a mix of Christian and Celtic Pagan iconography. They were made to fuse the two belief systems back in the day and have remained iconic to this day.

We then left the EU and crossed back into the UK as we made our way into Northern Ireland. I was excited and trepidatious about visiting this place. The word Belfast has always been synonymous with the IRA and the UDA and in my lifetime has been a place of fear and wonder. We arrived in the main square which housed a beautiful City Hall and all of the main coffee/supermarket chains that we were used to throughout England and Scotland. So far, pretty normal. We then jumped into the black cabs for the famed tour of the murals. Our cabbies were all old blokes who had lived through the troubles and now took touro’s around. All of these blokes were Protestant and they took us into a very Unionist area. We took in the murals and saw the Union Flag (Jack) and the Ulster Freedom Fighters flag flying outside everyone’s gaff. This was a little uncomfortable, but the drivers were so calm and knowledgeable that we were set at ease pretty quickly. We then checked out the “Peace wall” that divides the city still (just like Berlin) where we had a group pic and wrote a message of peace on the walls.

The tour was so informative and we learnt a lot about the troubles, but from a Proddie P.O.V. We couldn’t drive into the Catholic side of the city for obvious reasons. As they said, there is a cease fire on but there is still so much hatred over all that happened from 1969 until 1999. In this 30 years, 4,500 people from both sides were killed and nearly every family in Belfast has lost someone. It’s understandable why so much fear, resentment and hatred still remains.

After this we saw where the Titanic was built but we elected not to check out the tour. We did see the sound stages where GOT is filmed, so that was pretty cool.

Rory then drove us to our crappy hostel and we walked up to Ryan’s Bar for heaps of drinks and getting to know you sessions with our new fellow travellers and a two course meal for 10 quid. Nae bad. I went for the smoked pork ribs for starters while Jen had the Caesar salad. We both went for the pork belly on champ for our mains. We headed downstairs and a crew of about 10 of us got on the turps – complete with shots of Scotland’s favourite fortified wine; Buckfast. I hadn’t had Bucky since I lived in the ‘Burgh and it was crazy to see it in Belfast. Anyway we all had shots and slept like lions.

Today was very informative, happy, sad, a little frightening, but ultimately a great day to be alive and on the road.

Ciao ‘til next time.

Sedge

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