Breakfast in Belfast

What I've been up to this week.

Here I sit in Paddy's Palace youth hostel in Belfast's Queens quarter.  It has been a crazy past few days as I have been travelling all over the UK.  On Sun morning I took a bus to Manchester and stayed there just long enough to see one of the greatest fast food signs ever.  "McTucky's"  a chicken and burger place.  I then caught the train to Hadfield, about 40 min east.  It is a tiny little hamlet with no real significance, except for the fact that they shot my favorite Britcom (British comedy tv series) there.  It is called The League of Gentlemen and no it is not that movie about superheroes in the 1900's.  I walked around the town for a while and geeked out as I recognized some of the locations where certain scenes were shot.  I then hopped on a train to Liverpool where I would spend the next couple of days.  I arrived around 9pm and after some trouble I found the hostel.  I went out and had some dinner and then went right to bed.  At about 3am two extremely drunken Irish lads came into the room and made all kinds of a racket going to bed.  I was finally was experiencing true hostel living.  The best was yet to come though.  2 hours later at 5am their alarm clock started going off but they were oblivious.  It turned out they had ordered a cab.  Eventually the manager of the hostel woke them up.  One of the lads got up got dressed and was ready to go.  The other refused to move.  His buddy had to literally drag him out of bed 2 times before he would get moving.  I remember him saying "Ted let's go, there are other people in here and they're sick of us!"  How right you are my friend.  I managed to forgive them later for disrupting my sleep, when I found a 20 euro note that one of them had dropped.  That bought me breakfast and lunch.  Thanks lads!!!

Mon morning  I went off to explore dwontown Liverpool.  I visited the Anglican Catherdral and snapped quite a few photos of other historical buildings.  The Cathedral had a 311ft high tower that I clibed to te top of (using stairs) and got some nice shots of the city.  THey said you could see for miles but the day was overcast and I could barely see across the Mersey. Tues was reserved for the Beatles.  I met up with Bryn and we went to the Beatles story, the only permanent Beatles museum in the world.  After that it was off on the Magical Mystery Tour to see all the sights.  I got a pic of the Penny Lane road signs as well as the fromer houses of the Beatles.  I also got a shocking piece of news.  Just a couple of hours after I had been up to the top of the Cathedral a prominant local lawyer had thrown himself off the tower to his death.  When I was up there I remember wondering what it would be like to fall from that far up.  I guess he found out.

Now on to less depressing stuff.  Tue night I took the ferry from Liverpool over to Belfast.  It was an 8 hour ferry ride that cost $100.  BEcause I didn't feel like shelling out another $100 for a cabin I had to "sleep" in a reclining chair.  When we got off the boat it was 6am and I was dog tired, but there were still 7 hours to kill until I could check in to my hostel.  I walked around Queens college for a while, sat and had some tea, read my Jack the Ripper book for a couple hours and then finally it was time.  I checked in and right away took a nap.  So far the hostel isn't busy and I have the 8 person dorm room all to myself.  Today I am taking a bus sightseeing tour of the city and tommorow it is off of a tour of Historic Derry the Antrim Coastline and the Giants Causeway.  I won't have any pics until after Monday when I get back to London and can up load them, but do yourself a favor and look up the Giants causeway on Google Image search.   I will write more soon.