Days 7 1/2 and 8 - (Northern) Ireland Adventure

Belfast

As I said previously, we weren't quite sure what we expected to find in Northern Ireland - but absolutely didn't expect to find this:

Belfast is one of the most beautiful, friendly, wonderful cities that either of us has ever been to.

We checked into our hotel and started out on our tour of  'must see' pubs.

Our first (and pretty much only) stop was the Duke of York. We didn't plan on this being the only pub we visited that night, but we walked in, ordered, and were immediately adopted by a group of men who grew up in Belfast, went their separate ways, and still got together a couple times a year to get reacquainted.

Kenny, Eddie, Ian, Thomas and Marty were around our age and had been in pop bands together in the '80s. We even later found Marty and his band, Katmandu, on YouTube and I swear I saw them at a club in London, back in the day.

To say these men were interesting is an understatement. Our conversation started with them trying to guess which part of the United States we were from. This took quite a lot of time, not only as they discusse our accents, but then to try to explain where Minnesota actually is, and why anyone would want to live there.

Talk turned to how they all knew each other, then how hard it was for some of them to go to various pubs throughout the city back in the '80s. Apparently, if you showed your ID at the door, and you had a 'Catholic' last name, you simply weren't welcome.

I'm not going to get into the history of the Irish Troubles. That's what Wikipedia is for. But we found it interesting, and kind of scary, that even in the '90s our marriage would have been considered a mixed marriage (Sean grew up Catholic, I grew up Protestant) and very, very frowned upon. Luckily the younger generations are far removed from the Irish Troubles and give that era's religious and political problem very little thought.

Oh, apparently the IRA set off a car bomb outside of the Duke of York in 1993. No one was hurt and there wasn't much damage, but still...

We spent the next day, Day 8, roaming the city.

 Opera House

a big fish sculpture

Albert Memorial

and some of the more historically significant pubs, such as The Spaniard

and Maddens

  and Kelly's Cellars.

Kelly's Cellars was a lot of fun, especially since England was playing Columbia in the FIFA World Cup. There was a large crowd on Kelly's patio - with people being equally split between supporting the two teams.

We noticed that those rooting for Sweden weren't necessarily fans of Columbia as much as they didn't want England to win.

It was a good-natured crowd though and people seemed to get along regardless of the team they were cheering for.