There's a big lake between Donegal and Belfast, which means you can't drive straight from one to the other. You have to go either north or south around the lake. We elected to go north and extend the drive a bit so we could visit the walled city of Derry.
Derry actually wasn't that far out of our way, and it was around this time that I began to understand how small Ireland actually is. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and realized that you can fit three Irelands in the state of Colorado. (Later, better calculations confirmed this conclusion). I always knew Colorado was big, but that really put things in perspective for me.
Derry was a neat little city that reminded us strongly of a sort of miniature Pittsburgh. It was built in a really hilly area next to a river that was beginning to be crossed by lots of cool bridges (we only saw three, but the city seems to be expanding, so I'm sure there will be more before long). Upon arriving in Derry, we left Ireland for the UK which meant it was time for some changes. Currency switched from Euros to Pounds, signs switched from kilometers to miles, and the perspective of history altered sharply. In Donegal, we learned about the old kings who were raised up as heroes who had been unfairly driven off their land. Here they were rebels who were victoriously defeated.
There was one detail presented in both cities that I found particularly interesting. Back when England was conquering Ireland (in the 1600s, under the rules of Elizabeth, Charles I, and Charles II), one of the things they needed was accurate maps. Ireland quickly became one of the most accurately mapped areas in the world, but only the eastern half. On the maps, the western coast is essentially a straight line with almost no detail. The old kings knew the dangers these maps posed and beheaded any cartographers they came across. Which also means that these cartographers are alternately presented as traitors or heroes, depending on the perspective. Seeing the two sides so close to each other was really fun.
In Derry we visited the Guild Hall (which had an exhibit on all this information) and St Columb's Cathedral. Like all the other cathedrals we toured, this one had awesome stained glass windows. With one key difference. Here, all of the windows were dedicated to various men who had died in the 1860s. It seems that a bishop arrived around that time who was put out by the plainness of the cathedral. He convinced the widows and families of deceased men to sponsor elaborate stained glass windows in their honor. It was an interesting way of getting the job done.
When we were done in Derry, we headed to our hotel in Belfast, which we had some trouble finding. It was hidden away downtown and instead of saying Fitzwilliam Hotel anywhere, there was just a big stylized F on the building. On the opposite side of the way we were driving. But we did eventually make it.
I'll be honest, by the time we got to Belfast, I was pretty much ready to go home. I was missing my cat and dog, and I longed to just lounge around and do nothing for a bit. When you're in a new city, there's a pressure to go out and explore and see new things, and it was starting to get to me. I was tired. It didn't help that the hotel staff didn't have any useful suggestions for things to do. When we asked them where we should go, they pointed us to the mall. The mall was cool, but it wasn't at all what we were in the mood for.
This is partly because Belfast is more of an industry town that isn't really set up four tourists. There aren't all that many sites to see, though they are actively working on that. We also arrived on the wrong weekend. While there were festivals and shows and things to do throughout the Spring and Summer, we managed to hit the weekend when none of that was happening.
Well, that's not entirely true. There was a really cool international food festival. Everything smelled good, but we weren't hungry enough to eat, and the beer was mostly overpriced.
After we'd exhausted the food festival, we wandered through the shopping district. The mall was cool, sort of a hybrid between indoor and outdoor shopping centers. But we were so wary of weight limits at that point that we didn't want to buy anything. Instead we found a place with burgers and craft beer and had an early dinner. Then we headed into the cathedral district. We got to St Anne's, a military themed cathedral, shortly before it closed and saw some cool stained glass. But we didn't make it to St Patrick's.
After that we decided to find some music. But once again, nothing started until 9, and I just didn't have the energy to stay out that long. We bought a bottle of wine and went back to the hotel room, where I turned on the TV and found re-runs of How I Met Your Mother and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?
The next morning we headed over to the Titanic Quarter, which is one of the more interesting things to do in Belfast. The city used to be the center of ship-building, along with a lot of other, related industries, and it's biggest claim to fame is that it build Titanic, along with her sister ships. The old dockyards are in the process of being transformed from a place of industry to something more like an entertainment district, with apartments, restaurants, and shops. But it's just at the beginning of the construction project.
The big thing that is open is the Titanic museum, which was actually really cool. It takes you through the early industrial boom of Belfast (The US Civil War actually helped them a lot because the shortage of cotton put their linen in high demand). The decision to build a cruise ship like the Titanic is put into historical context, and then you walk through every stage of building it. They have displays of the original drawings of the ship (in a nifty interactive computer interface). You get to see the special scaffolding they had to build before they could even begin to build the ship. Then they walk you through the laying of the deck, the building of the sides, the launch into the sea (which they have actual video of) and the outfitting of all the cabins and spaces on board the ship. Start to finish, the Titanic took three years to build, and that's just the ship. From conception to the maiden voyage it took even longer.
And then it sank, three days later. I've seen the movie countless times and went through a phase where I watched every documentary I could get my hands on. But having the information presented to me this way made it hit me like never before. They put so much work into this ship. The loss of life is, of course, tragic. But the loss of all the time and money spent engineering and building the ship was pretty awful, too. I can't imagine dedicating so much of my life to something, only to have it fail so quickly and decisively.
After we walked through the museum, it was still early afternoon, and we could think of nothing else to do. I was cranky and tired, so we bought another bottle of wine and went back to the hotel room to read and nap and take it easy for a while. Like I said, I was pretty honeymooned out at this point.
For dinner, we had initially hoped to go to a place that does a 9-course recreation of the final dinner served (to first class passengers) on board the Titanic. But it turns out that's not something you can just book for two people. You need a much bigger group. Instead, we found a restaurant that had just opened the previous week called Stix and Stone. It was a steakhouse whose gimmick was that you cook your own steak to your liking. The kitchen sears it, then places it on a hot stone with some garnish and a sauce of your choosing. You leave it on the stone until the steak is cooked to your liking.
It was a really neat concept, and we had a lot of fun with it. The waiter recommended that we remove the streak immediately and then place strips on the stone to experiment a bit. That was a neat idea, but I think it's mostly meant for people who don't cook steaks very often. I knew exactly how I wanted my steak, and I managed to cook it perfectly.
After dinner we went back to the food festival to get dessert, then decided to head back to the bar and see if we could catch some live music. And to our amazement, there were a couple of ladies performing when we got there! They played a mix of traditional Irish music and contemporary American country music. They also, by request, played Brown-Eyed Girl and this time everyone knew how the "sha la la"s went. There was a guy sitting next to me who looked like a scruffy Ryan Gosling - not Hollywood scruffy, but actually scruffy. So all in all, the night was pretty perfect.
The next morning we had to get up super early to catch our flight. We ended up getting to the airport way earlier than we needed to. Even after we'd returned the car, gone through security, gone through the second, US security (where they make you take off your shoes), and gone through customs, we still had an hour to kill at the gate. But the way our travel experiences had been going, this was way better than the alternative.
The whole trip was a lot of fun, and it was nice to be able to take two full weeks. As I said, by the time we were heading home I was more than ready to be on my way. I missed my things and my animals and being able to just lounge on the couch without having to worry about exploring or finding food or anything. But the honeymoon wasn't entirely over yet. Once we got home, we still had a day and a half before we had to go back to work.
Derry actually wasn't that far out of our way, and it was around this time that I began to understand how small Ireland actually is. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and realized that you can fit three Irelands in the state of Colorado. (Later, better calculations confirmed this conclusion). I always knew Colorado was big, but that really put things in perspective for me.
Derry was a neat little city that reminded us strongly of a sort of miniature Pittsburgh. It was built in a really hilly area next to a river that was beginning to be crossed by lots of cool bridges (we only saw three, but the city seems to be expanding, so I'm sure there will be more before long). Upon arriving in Derry, we left Ireland for the UK which meant it was time for some changes. Currency switched from Euros to Pounds, signs switched from kilometers to miles, and the perspective of history altered sharply. In Donegal, we learned about the old kings who were raised up as heroes who had been unfairly driven off their land. Here they were rebels who were victoriously defeated.
There was one detail presented in both cities that I found particularly interesting. Back when England was conquering Ireland (in the 1600s, under the rules of Elizabeth, Charles I, and Charles II), one of the things they needed was accurate maps. Ireland quickly became one of the most accurately mapped areas in the world, but only the eastern half. On the maps, the western coast is essentially a straight line with almost no detail. The old kings knew the dangers these maps posed and beheaded any cartographers they came across. Which also means that these cartographers are alternately presented as traitors or heroes, depending on the perspective. Seeing the two sides so close to each other was really fun.
In Derry we visited the Guild Hall (which had an exhibit on all this information) and St Columb's Cathedral. Like all the other cathedrals we toured, this one had awesome stained glass windows. With one key difference. Here, all of the windows were dedicated to various men who had died in the 1860s. It seems that a bishop arrived around that time who was put out by the plainness of the cathedral. He convinced the widows and families of deceased men to sponsor elaborate stained glass windows in their honor. It was an interesting way of getting the job done.
When we were done in Derry, we headed to our hotel in Belfast, which we had some trouble finding. It was hidden away downtown and instead of saying Fitzwilliam Hotel anywhere, there was just a big stylized F on the building. On the opposite side of the way we were driving. But we did eventually make it.
I'll be honest, by the time we got to Belfast, I was pretty much ready to go home. I was missing my cat and dog, and I longed to just lounge around and do nothing for a bit. When you're in a new city, there's a pressure to go out and explore and see new things, and it was starting to get to me. I was tired. It didn't help that the hotel staff didn't have any useful suggestions for things to do. When we asked them where we should go, they pointed us to the mall. The mall was cool, but it wasn't at all what we were in the mood for.
This is partly because Belfast is more of an industry town that isn't really set up four tourists. There aren't all that many sites to see, though they are actively working on that. We also arrived on the wrong weekend. While there were festivals and shows and things to do throughout the Spring and Summer, we managed to hit the weekend when none of that was happening.
Well, that's not entirely true. There was a really cool international food festival. Everything smelled good, but we weren't hungry enough to eat, and the beer was mostly overpriced.
After we'd exhausted the food festival, we wandered through the shopping district. The mall was cool, sort of a hybrid between indoor and outdoor shopping centers. But we were so wary of weight limits at that point that we didn't want to buy anything. Instead we found a place with burgers and craft beer and had an early dinner. Then we headed into the cathedral district. We got to St Anne's, a military themed cathedral, shortly before it closed and saw some cool stained glass. But we didn't make it to St Patrick's.
After that we decided to find some music. But once again, nothing started until 9, and I just didn't have the energy to stay out that long. We bought a bottle of wine and went back to the hotel room, where I turned on the TV and found re-runs of How I Met Your Mother and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?
The next morning we headed over to the Titanic Quarter, which is one of the more interesting things to do in Belfast. The city used to be the center of ship-building, along with a lot of other, related industries, and it's biggest claim to fame is that it build Titanic, along with her sister ships. The old dockyards are in the process of being transformed from a place of industry to something more like an entertainment district, with apartments, restaurants, and shops. But it's just at the beginning of the construction project.
The big thing that is open is the Titanic museum, which was actually really cool. It takes you through the early industrial boom of Belfast (The US Civil War actually helped them a lot because the shortage of cotton put their linen in high demand). The decision to build a cruise ship like the Titanic is put into historical context, and then you walk through every stage of building it. They have displays of the original drawings of the ship (in a nifty interactive computer interface). You get to see the special scaffolding they had to build before they could even begin to build the ship. Then they walk you through the laying of the deck, the building of the sides, the launch into the sea (which they have actual video of) and the outfitting of all the cabins and spaces on board the ship. Start to finish, the Titanic took three years to build, and that's just the ship. From conception to the maiden voyage it took even longer.
And then it sank, three days later. I've seen the movie countless times and went through a phase where I watched every documentary I could get my hands on. But having the information presented to me this way made it hit me like never before. They put so much work into this ship. The loss of life is, of course, tragic. But the loss of all the time and money spent engineering and building the ship was pretty awful, too. I can't imagine dedicating so much of my life to something, only to have it fail so quickly and decisively.
After we walked through the museum, it was still early afternoon, and we could think of nothing else to do. I was cranky and tired, so we bought another bottle of wine and went back to the hotel room to read and nap and take it easy for a while. Like I said, I was pretty honeymooned out at this point.
For dinner, we had initially hoped to go to a place that does a 9-course recreation of the final dinner served (to first class passengers) on board the Titanic. But it turns out that's not something you can just book for two people. You need a much bigger group. Instead, we found a restaurant that had just opened the previous week called Stix and Stone. It was a steakhouse whose gimmick was that you cook your own steak to your liking. The kitchen sears it, then places it on a hot stone with some garnish and a sauce of your choosing. You leave it on the stone until the steak is cooked to your liking.
It was a really neat concept, and we had a lot of fun with it. The waiter recommended that we remove the streak immediately and then place strips on the stone to experiment a bit. That was a neat idea, but I think it's mostly meant for people who don't cook steaks very often. I knew exactly how I wanted my steak, and I managed to cook it perfectly.
After dinner we went back to the food festival to get dessert, then decided to head back to the bar and see if we could catch some live music. And to our amazement, there were a couple of ladies performing when we got there! They played a mix of traditional Irish music and contemporary American country music. They also, by request, played Brown-Eyed Girl and this time everyone knew how the "sha la la"s went. There was a guy sitting next to me who looked like a scruffy Ryan Gosling - not Hollywood scruffy, but actually scruffy. So all in all, the night was pretty perfect.
The next morning we had to get up super early to catch our flight. We ended up getting to the airport way earlier than we needed to. Even after we'd returned the car, gone through security, gone through the second, US security (where they make you take off your shoes), and gone through customs, we still had an hour to kill at the gate. But the way our travel experiences had been going, this was way better than the alternative.
The whole trip was a lot of fun, and it was nice to be able to take two full weeks. As I said, by the time we were heading home I was more than ready to be on my way. I missed my things and my animals and being able to just lounge on the couch without having to worry about exploring or finding food or anything. But the honeymoon wasn't entirely over yet. Once we got home, we still had a day and a half before we had to go back to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment