Felt pretty tired today, probably not surprising since I went from virtually no sleep to basically sleeping for about 15 hours. But no time to sleep in today, today my friend Gina arrived from Kentucky! I took my first Uber in Ireland today, which was pretty interesting since they don’t have private Uber drivers here, they’re all taxis, you just use the app to call the car… while it’s pretty convenient, we discovered that they cost quite a bit more than just taking a regular taxi… more on that later! So I Uber’d to the airport to meet Gina, while waiting I was very excited to find a Dr. Pepper in a little shop in the airport, but when I took a sip I realized there was something amok. Apparently most sodas in Ireland regardless of if they’re regular or diet are made with Aspartame. Now I know to check the ingredients before I buy a soda, the jury is out on the health concerns\benefits of aspartame, but I do not like the taste, so that was a lesson learned. (So far the only soda I’ve found that doesn’t have aspartame is Coke, and I found a Mexican Sprite and a Dark Berry Dr. Pepper at a pizza shop down the street- more on that later).
Gina and I took the same bus that I took the previous day to the City Center in Dublin. Our destination today was Belfast so we didn’t spend much time dawdling in Dublin, we headed straight for Connolly Street Station (about a 10 minute walk from our bus stop on O’Connell Street). We arrived at the station around 1140 and the next train to Belfast wasn’t until 1320, so we killed some time at a café at the station called O’Brien’s. Around 1310 we decided to go see if the train had arrived (it had), pro tip: go out early for the train, by the time we went out to catch the train it was pretty packed and we weren’t sure we’d actually make it on!
Other than the uncertainty at the beginning the train ride was very nice, the car was very clean, a lady walked through with a snack cart (2nd pro-tip, if you see her and you don’t have a drink or snack, flag her down, I regretted not grabbing a water since it was a 2 hour train ride!), people were very nice. Apparently at some point we picked up a bunch of club goers because our train car started to fill up with a bunch of kids passing around booze (some of them looked about 12, but as Nick Clements politely pointed out to me, everyone looks 12 to us these days). I was thrilled to know that it wasn’t just us put off by the behavior of these kids, as I heard a local gentleman mutter as we were getting off the train that these kids need a “swift kick in the arse”.
We arrived in Belfast around 1530 and were going to take an Uber to our AirBnB, but a very nice gentleman instructed us to go down the lift to the right of the train exit and use the yellow phone to call a cab. It seemed very clandestine, but we did find the yellow phone, made the call, and the gentleman on the other line said he’d pick us up soon. While we were the only ones out there at first, several people came out and taxis started to pull up, there wasn’t much rhyme or reason to the pick ups but everyone was super polite. When a taxi pulled up that we thought might be ours, we told him our destination was 141 Newtownards Road (apparently not pronounced like New-town-ards as my American brain told me, but like NewtonARDS as everyone else waiting around us helped us correctly pronounce). Apparently he was not ours, or the fare just wouldn’t be enough for him so he said he wasn’t there for us and took someone else- so far he’s probably the rudest person we’ve encountered here, literally everyone else has been a dream.
The next taxi to pull up was there for us and I’m so glad he was because he was wonderful, he told us all about the areas we were driving through, explained a bit about the Troubles and how there are still some big tensions in the city between the Catholic sector and the Protestant sector. Apparently we’re staying in the Protestant sector and that’s indicated by a certain flag that’s hanging about and graffiti/signs indicating the UDA (Ulster Defence Association)- think the IRA but Protestants, according to Wikipedia, they’re a Loyalist paramilitary group set up to defend Protestants in Northern Ireland, in the 1970s they openly patrolled the Protestant areas of the city armed with batons and held large marches and rallies. There was a group within the UDA charged with conducting paramilitary attacks and they operated under the cover name “Ulster Freedom Fighters” to prevent the UDA from being shutdown. He also recommended bars and restaurants for us, in case you decide to visit Belfast, the Cathedral Quarter came highly recommended for bars. In addition to the excellent service, our cab ride was only 6 pounds, as I said earlier, take regular cabs, Uber would’ve cost us at least 17 pounds for the same trip.
Our AirBnB is amazing! We’re staying in the Titanic Worker’s Apartments which have been converted and updated and were originally built as housing for the workers who built the Titanic (yes, if you didn’t know, the Titanic was built in Belfast!) Apparently the Titanic Museum is the number one recommended attraction in Belfast- not only by every tour book that I read, but also by Jay, our awesome taxi driver. (Fun Fact: there are two Titanic museums in Ireland, the big one is of course in Belfast, and there’s a small one in Cobh, which is the last place the Titanic docked before setting out for its fateful voyage.)
Since Gina got in early this morning and didn’t have much more luck than I did in sleeping on the plane and I was still feeling some of the effects of jet lag, we decided to take it easy the first night in Belfast, we took a walk to a grocery store (after trying to find 2 other convenience stores which were both closed, we saw a woman walking with bags that said “Russel’s” I Googled that and it was close by so we headed there). On the way to finding a convenience store we passed a little shop called Huckleberry’s Pizza and Dessert bar and decided to takeaway pizzas. We also found some familiar candy brands but variations of that candy that we don’t have back home, so we decided to partake in those (we did not regret this decision.)
