Belfast, Northern Ireland

Supporters of football/soccer, perhaps?

Graffiti on Belfast storefront.

After the Titanic Museum, I had a pint of cask ale at McHugh's Tavern. The spot was a little over 300 years old with a modest bottle list and a few taps along with two gravity-fed "beer engines" that dispense real ale. Real ale is still undergoing fermentation in the cask when it's dispensed, and lots of Americans tend to dismiss the beer as being flat and warm. It's more like it's gently carbonated and cellar temperature, and the cask is viable for a few days and has subtle flavors expressed by the live yeast which really are nice.

Jasper in front of the Titanic Museum. It's less than a year old and really does a good job of explaining how much work went into building the ship and how quickly everything went south after hitting the iceberg, a combination of overconfidence, incompetence, and tempting fate. Jasper was really impacted when he realized how many people died, quite a few needlessly, in the disorganization after the impact. Plus, many of the second- and third-class passengers were killed along with the first-class passengers but were ignored by the press and whose families were given far inferior burial arrangements and settlements.
 

Exterior of the Titanic Museum. It was only a couple hundred meters across the dock from MV Explorer, but we couldn't get there directly unless we swam.
 

PSA aboard the Belfast buses. I guess it's a pressing issue, right?

Here's a bar Ellen and I found on our pub crawl. It's in a flatiron building and pretty small inside and dates from the 17th century. Colorful characters inside, too, along with trouble mural type paintings and muppets drinking alongside famous Irish authors. Sure, why not?

Glorious pour of a British IPA.

More street art. These are crocheted sleeves that get placed upon scaffolding, signposts, and what have you. 

We've just left Dublin, Ireland and our trip is quickly coming to a close. I have a few more at-sea blogs to jot down so I don't forget about the details. The MV Explorer landed in Belfast a few days ago, and we had a little more time than in Scotland for this trip, about a full 16 hours, which was enough to get a taste.

I'm a little confused about the money. Ireland is part of the EU and uses the Euro as currency, but Northern Ireland uses the British Pound. Even beyond that, we got Irish Pounds at one ATM, so we'll have to convert them at a bank in London to regular British Pounds. Erg. Well, all I know is that I spent all my Euro, so I'm okay in that regard, and I'll have a little bit of Pounds once we hit London, although I don't expect them to last long in one of the world's most expensive cities.

Growing up, I associated Belfast with political unrest and terrorism even before I understood what terrorism really is. It's going to be quite interesting to be in London tomorrow just a couple days after the terrorist machete attack on the soldier, and it seems lately that there are frequent reminders that the world is on edge. In Belfast, the streets felt safe and people were friendly, and it's now a tourist destination whereas a decade or two ago visiting Belfast would be equivalent to visiting Beirut or Tehran. Doable, possibly, but probably not advised. Now, it's a fairly stable area with beautiful sights, pretty countryside, and stuff that makes Northern Ireland inviting.

Jasper and I snapped few pics below to show what we saw in Belfast. In the morning, Ellen, her dad, Jasper, and I went to see some of the city before they branched off to see some of the "trouble murals" painted on walls separating Protestant and Catholic Belfast; the murals show support and opposition to viewpoints political, cultural, religious, national, and perhaps even more complex than these. Jasper and I went to the Titanic Museum for a few hours, followed by a pint for me at the closest real-looking pub I could find, before meeting up again on the ship to have some dinner. Sandy took one for the team so Ellen and I could go out for our own little pub crawl before getting back aboard before onship time of 2200 (10pm).

A fairly short blog since we had only part of a day in Belfast, but the pictures came out okay although for some reason Blogger wants to put them at the top of the screen. Next up is Dublin, Ireland, before we have to disembark.