Back to School

A recap of my trip

Ok I am back in London and ready to tell you all about my superfun and exciting goodtimes that I had over the past week.  First things first though.  Here are a few pics, as promised of the lovely Liverpool. 

 This is the Anglican Cathedral.  And here is the view from the top

.

This is probably pretty similar to the view that the jumper had when he threw himself off of this roof only a couple hours after I took this shot.  On a lighter note here is a shot of Liverpool's other Cathedral.  I took also took this shot from the roof of the Anglican Cathedral.

This one was built in the 60's (obviously ) and has been given quite a few colorful nicknames by the locals including:  The Mersey Funnel, The Sacred Wigwam, and my personal favorite: The Pope's Launching Pad.

Last but not least here is the 2nd most famous road in Beatle history, found in the suburbs of Liverpool.

I quite enjoyed Liverpool.  The people were  very friendly and helpful and being a huge Beatles geek, I could easily see myself the city there again.  All good things must come to an end however and I left the city at 10:30pm on Tues night and hopped on to a ferry headed for Belfast.  That ride took about 8 hours, 2 of which I managed to sleep through.  I arrived at Belfast at 6am ish and had to walk around the Queens quarter until check in time at the hostel.  Forgive me if I'm repeating myself here.

I have to say that as a whole I was not as impressed with Belfast as I had hoped.  I have taken a few classes on Ireland and the troubles and I really was looking forward to seeing the area first hand, especially without the risk of being killed.  When I arrived there however I found that the city and the people were trying to forget the troubles, quite understandably I guess.  The only major museum that would have had exhibits on the issues was the Ulster museum.  It had closed 2 weeks before I arrived and would be shut for 2 years for renovations.  I did see some of the areas, such as the Shankill and the Falls roads that were the sight of the majority of the sectarian violence.  There were many murals such as this one.

This is Bobby Sands an Irish hero, who died in jail on a hunger strike.  It was quite depressing then, to see this same image a couple of blocks away being used in an ad for black taxi tours.  I guess nothing is sacred anymore.  All in all Belfast reminded me a bit of Spokane.  It was a lot smaller than I expected and although there were signs of economic recovery, the city was quite ratty around the edges in some parts.  There were not very many historical buildings but I guess that is to be expected when the city has spent the past 30 years blowing itself to bits.  The picture in my header is one of the few examples left.  It is known as the Albert Tower and because it was built on marshy ground it leans about 4 feet.  I also liked the neo-gothic building of the Queens University and this building, the  Belfast City Hall.

I don't want to be too hard on the city.  I think my opinion was affected by the rain and my travel weariness.  I just found it to be somewhat frustrating.  Other that 30 years of violence, Belfast's other main claim to fame is as the birthplace of the Titanic.  I guess when your biggest success is the worlds biggest failure, it can hold a city back a bit.

I did enjoy the country side of Northern Ireland quite a bit more however.  On Friday I took a sight seeing trip with Paddy Wagon tours.  At 8 am we headed out into the green fields.  Our first stop was the Cerrick-a-rede rope bridge.  I didn't even know this at the time I booked the tour.  For some reason this trip keeps taking me to high places, rope bridges, Cathedral towers, the top of monuments, it's all fair game for Chris Dawson-Ripley, intrepid adventurer!!

Seriously though here is the bridge.

And here is the view I had when I was crossing it.

After that death defying experience it was off to the Giants Causeway, the coolest rock formation in the world.  These famous stones have been featured in movies and most famously on the cover of the Led Zeppelin album "Houses of the Holy"

 

Scientists say that the Causeway was formed by rapidly cooling volcanic stone.  The Irish have another explanation.  The Giant Fin Mcool needed to find a bride so he built the causeway that stretched from this point in Ireland to Scotland.  There he met his bride and they returned to Ireland and were married.  A Scottish giant also fancied Finn's wife and so he began to cross the causeway to fight Finn.  The Scottish giant was much bigger and Finn knew he would lose.  Instead of battling he dressed up as a baby.  When the giant showed up at Finn's house he demanded to know where Finn was.  His wife explained that he was out but would be back soon.  The Scottish giant took look one look at the "baby"and realized that if the kid was that big, the dad must be huge!  He fled across the causeway back to Scotland destroying it as he went so that Finn couldn't follow him.  This story actually makes a bit of sense.  There is another formation quite similar to the causeway located in Scotland.  Explain that, science!!!  Interesting side note the formation in Scotland is known as Fingals Cave which is the title of a Pink Floyd song.  Ok I am running out of steam now.  Hopefully this wasn't too long and boring.  I did include lot's more pictures this time. Now that I know how to resize them it is a lot easier for me to include them and I will be posting a lot more of them, which means less boring words for you to read.  I will write again  soon.