Wall to Wall Belfast

Saturday, July 11, 2015
Swords, County Dublin, Ireland
Saturday morning, we got up to do a "black taxi" tour of Belfast. Now it was a particularly interesting day to do this tour, which takes you through a couple of the neighbourhoods that were at the heart of the "Troubles". The date is July 11, one day before what is know here simply as "The Twelfth", what we know as King Billy's Day or Orange Day, a huge celebration for Protestant or "Loyalist" Northern Ireland. And a huge source of tension, with the Catholic "Republican" population. Our first stop was one of the gates along the "Peace Wall" that separates Protestant Shankill from Catholic Falls. Normally these gates are open during the days during the week and the pedestrian portions are open even on weekends, but not this weekend. 17 years after the Good Friday Agreement ended "The Troubles", there is still a lot of tension and the bonfires and parades of the twelfth can still prove incendiary. We then went down into Lower Shankill which was, and still is, the heart of Ulster Defence Association territory. Apparently they still control all of the crime and protection rackets in the area . The area is filled with murals on the ends of the row houses that tell a lot of the stories of the conflicts in the area (from one side of course). It was very creepy walking around the area, especially decked out for the 12th, and it's hard to imagine how anyone who lives there can ever let go of the past.  We then went to the Shankill side of the "Peace Wall", which stretches 2 1/2 miles, separating the Shankill and Clonard neighbourhoods and is covered with artwork and signatures from all over the world. Interestingly, the people on both sided of the wall don't want it taken down even now, as they say they feel safer with it there. Next we went through one of the open gates to the Catholic side and Bombay Street in Clonard, where there is a memorial to all of the neighbourhood people lost in the conflicts over the years, then to the Sinn Fein offices in the neighbourhood and finally to the International Wall, which has become a huge tourist attraction and is a constantly changing set of murals about struggles in Ireland and around the world.    By the way, the story of the Black Taxis is interesting as they were the strictly neutral means of transportation in the troubled areas and were off limits to both sides for any kind of attack (as you never knew who might be in one). We then went back to the area of our hotel (the Cathedral Quarter), had a nice Tapas lunch and got a few more pics from the area and then headed off to spend the night in Swords, about 10 minutes from the Dublin Airport, for our flight on Sunday to London.
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