Belle of Belfast City

Hi hi everyone!
So if you're wondering about the title of this post here's the inspiration - this is my fav version but they change the words to Dublin...still the REAL song is about Belfast - I'll Tell Me Ma

Belfast was AMAZING!!!!!! I'm adding the link to the photos at the end of this post and most of them have captions that explain what I was up to this weekend. But just in case I'll give you a quick summary now.

We left early Friday morning and drove to the border where we stopped off at InterTrade Ireland which is one of the companies created in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (depending on what you prefer to call it) that are meant to sort of overcome the borders and unite the two sides of Ireland to create well...the slight contentious term of a "One-Island Economy" (the Unionists aren't fans of that term).

Anyway then we went to Belfast and had lunch before jumping back on the bus to go to Stormont, the home of the Northern Ireland Assembly where we were given a tour and had a Q&A session with a representative of the DUP. They're the VERY biased Unionist party (sort of like the Unionist version of Sinn Fein).

Next we went up to Portrush for dinner and then headed over to our hotel. At the hotel we had a crazy dance party in their bar and headed off to bed (after watching Lady Gaga's Top 50 Patry Songs Countdown).

The next morning we went to Giant's Causeway Kevin gave us a lecture on ummm....everything under the sun. A lot about folklore though.
Next we crossed the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge which was awesome!!!! And I wasn't even scared! Yayyyyy! I felt so cool. lol.

Finally, we returned to Belfast where we had lunch in the City Hall and then were given a tour of the city by a man who lived through the troubles. It was crazy, a lot of the stories we had learn t in class with Kevin actually happened to friends of this guy. Some of the most FAMOUS storied out of the troubles he was there for. It was....amazing. However, it was also one of the most depressing things I've ever gone through.

What scariest is the fact that you still need a giant fence to keep the peace. The houses alongside the Peace Wall have heavy duty gratings over the back of their house to protect them from bombs etc. How terrifying to raise your children in that environment.

Anyway...I'll maybe talk about this later but I know that relaying any of the stories would make this post go on forever.

So I'll just shut up and give you the link to the photos
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=216209&id=504857518&l=a8c8e2d54c