Our last day in Dublin/first day in Belfast was one of the longest days of the trip. We got up bright and early to leave Dublin and head for Belfast. The bus ride was about two hours long, which gave us a few minutes to catch our breath after we reached Belfast. I slept through most of the bus ride even though it was our first glimpse of the Irish countryside, but it had been a long 5 days, and I needed the extra Zzz's.
We started out the day by going to Belfast's City Hall for a tour. It was magnificent. It was made entirely of marble (from what I could tell), and had huge paintings on all of the walls commemorating the different government officials that had been elected to work there. Many of the rooms also had antique furniture and woodwork dating back almost 100 years. One of the rooms looked exactly like the ballroom from Beauty and the Beast. Random fact that I learned? The mascot of Belfast is a seahorse. Why? Nobody really knows... it just is.
After the tour we had about an hour to grab lunch and get cell phones (hooray!) It feels great to no longer be disconnected from the world. If you want my phone number let me know, and I'll send it to you :). After lunch we went on a walking tour of the city of Belfast, which included going into a giant glass dome at the top of a shopping center where there was a 360 degree view of the city. It was cool for about 5 minutes, but then (thanks to my mom) I started to feel the ground moving (we were 7 stories up) and had a minor freakout in my head. We also learned that the Titanic was built in Belfast all the way from the woodwork on the furniture to the ropes used when it was docked. Apparently no one spoke of the tragedy until after the movie came out and tourists flocked to see the city where the Titanic was built. My tour guide also told us a joke/random fact that I'm going to share. Apparently throughout the world there are only two words that can be recognized by people who speak any language: Coca-Cola and Titanic. "Which," my tour guide jested "both go down well with ice."
After the tour we had a short time to get settled into our hotel rooms before taking taxis to Queens University, which was an absolutely beautiful school. It looked like a castle. It was also nice to see how similar campus life was in Belfast to how it is in Syracuse (and all of the other schools I've had the pleasure of attending...) We had a lecture in one of their classrooms by a PhD student who was studying the relations between the Unionists and Nationalists in Belfast. It is all very complex. I'll probably go into more details in my next post, because the following day we went and visited both sides of the conflict to hear what they had to say.
That night a bunch of us decided to go out for dinner, and we found a restaurant/pub across the street from our hotel that had really good food. My discovery of the day? Sweet chili sauce. It tastes like Thai 'R Cracker sauce from Quaker, Steak, and Lube (where I waitressed all fall) which is my favorite sauce there. I am really happy about this since they don't have ranch dressing here, which is one of my favorite foods ever.
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