Weekend in Belfast

June 12-14 Weekend in Belfast Thursday we (a group of 6 of us) left for the long bus ride to Belfast. It was a 7 hour bus ride. We switched buses 2 times in order to get there. Since Belfast is in Northern Irleand, we thought we would need our passports to get into the country. However, we did not need them and we didn’t get a stamp. We got to Belfast in the early afternoon and checked into our hostel. After checking in we decided to get something to eat and ate at a local pub and then walked around town taking pictures. We found an art opening and spent several hours looking at the artwork. It was the end of the year art show for the art college. The work was very interesting and the college was very neat. On our walk home, a local Belfast man, gave us a walking tour of history to our hostel. He was headed to a pub. On Friday we did a hop on/hop off city bus tour. This was very neat. We got to see a lot of Belfast that we wouldn’t have otherwise scene. We even got to see areas where the fighting had occurred and were shown walls and gates that are still in place to keep communities safe. It was pretty crazy. But they had some really neat peace murals on all of the walls. The tour guide said that some of the walls have started to come down. On Sunday, we tried to see other areas that we hadn’t seen yet, but didn’t have as much time and we had our bags from checking out of the hostel. After our long bus ride back to Galway, we got back about 9:30 pm.