Weekend in Belfast

This past weekend 18/2/2011 I spent in the city of Belfast. Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland, so you can imagine that it is a very busy place with a lot to see. On Friday, we arrived in Belfast, it is about an hour train ride from Coleraine. We checked into our hostel & meet a girl name Alice from Australia then headed on our way out to dinner to TGIF's!! It was amazing to see all the American sport stuff in there and to see a menu that I was familiar with. I ended up with wings and mozzarella sticks, yummmyyy! After that we did some shopping/looking around that the Victoria Square shopping center. At this shopping center you can take an elevator all the way to the top where there is a globe of windows and see the entire town! It was an amazing view. Since over here everything closes pretty early we went back to our hostel and got ready to go the Student Union at Queen's University in Belfast. There campus is truly a site to see. The buildings at Queen's are all brick and it was built in 1810. It is a hard university to get into.

On Saturday, we started out our morning with breakfast at the hostel and thankfully it had french toast! Delicious and cheap! Then we headed our way out the the City Hall in Belfast and got a tour. It was an amazing building to see and our tour guide was truly inspirational. There is a lot of history here and the history I find very fascinating. The history that I've been told was made more clear during this tour. It also was learning about the Mayor and the legal system here, which is different from America by far. After the tour of the city hall we did some looking around of the city itself and then headed out for SUSHI!!! I have missed this dearly! The sushi place was amazing! It was called a sushi train, so random rolls came out and you were able to pick up whichever ones you wanted and it only cost a £1.80 per plate, which is really cheap! We went back got ready and headed out for another night out.

  Sunday, in my opinion was one of the best days we spent there. We got up ate breakfast, cleaned up our rooms, checked out of the hostel and thankfully they have a room where you can store your luggage for the day even if your not staying the night, and then we headed to the St. Georgie Market. This market is very similar to the farmer's markets in America. Great deals, great food, great merchandise, and great people. I felt like home when I was here. After spending a good chunk of time at the market we head to Falls Road in Belfast, this is where the peace wall is in Belfast. The peace wall splits the catholics from the protestants is my understanding of it. It was amazing to see more of the history here. Another road that the murals are on is called Sandy Row. After seeing some of the murals we headed back to the other side of Belfast down to the Ulster Museum. This museum was probably the most interesting museum I've ever been to. Wish when I was younger I loved museums. We got there an hour and a half before it closed and lets just say we will be returning because we weren't able to make it through it all before it was time to go. The history at this museum went back to the 16th century and was just intriguing to see all the history here and to get a better understanding of it.

Another update

Where to start?? First off, all I can say is that my time here has been amazing yet has already started to fly by! Yesterday, I discovered that I am 4 weeks into this semester and only have 8 weeks left until classes are over/Spring break/my trip around Europe...so last night my roommates, and I started making dates official and booking flights with trips and now our schedule is nicely packed...This weekend Belfast(2/18), next weekend Galway(2/25), two weekends after that we have visitors for both(3/4 & 3/11), then were off to Dublin for St. Patrick's day(3/16), then London(3/24), a couple crazy last couple weeks of school with essays & exams, and then trip through Europe for 2-3 weeks(4/14), then back for some final exams then Scotland and Amsterdam, then home to America on May 25th!!!! It's about to be nuts but exciting!

Last weekend: Saturday, we went to Castlerock right here in Northern Ireland and spent the day there which was beautiful..We stopped first at a local bakery and got tea with a scone for £1.40(which is really cheap) then went and saw the Mussenden Temple, Bishop's & Lion's Gate, Downhill House, and ended our day/afternoon with a drink at a local pub. Castlerock is about an 30minute train ride from Coleraine, so an easy travel for a day trip, but along the coast which was an amazing view.

 Sunday, we took a walk down to the local beach, which has been my home away from home lately. It's a spectacular view of nature, and the ocean. Every time I go down there I end up taking a million pictures just because the conditions of the weather and the waves changes, and I feel as I just can't get enough. When we went down this time though we decide to walk as far as the beach would let us, kind of a good/bad idea since we really didn't know how far it was until the end. But to our surprise at the end was a pathway that went out to a lighthouse. We were able to get pretty close to the lighthouse but couldn't go the entire way due to the waves that day that had been huge. The waves were crashing over the walkway and I was scared either my phone/camera would be damaged if they got wet and that I had the chance to be swept away with the large waves that were coming up. I plan to one day soon to make it out all the way to see the lighthouse up close.

And then last night I made it down to the local beach to see the sunset...there is no better way to end the day of classes and a day in general then this view..in my opinion :)