Monday was a bank holiday in Ireland, so Matt and Kat had the day off. We decided we'd catch a train up to Northern Ireland for the day. Cathy's question of the day was "I wonder how much they pay Stephen Hawking to do the train announcements". €34 one way if we bought at the train station, or €18 return on the Internet!
The biggest attraction in Belfast is the beautiful City Hall, which we took a tour of. We all got to sit in the Lord Mayor's chair, but the chair the Queen sat in was out of bounds.
There are two areas we were told to look out for street art; the first was the Falls Road area, where there's lot of protest art and a very anti-Bush, don't-meddle-with-the-world feeling. You have to walk through some pretty dismal streets to get to Shankill Road, where you're immediately greeted with more British flags than you have ever seen before. 
It's safe to assume we're not in the Republic any more. It's a working class Protestant suburb, and I think they like the Queen here more than they do in England. Patriotism is such an odd concept, but people really want to identify with somewhere.
Belfast had a huge shipbuilding industry around the turn of the century. They built the Titanic here, but I'm not sure why they're proud of it.
Here's Tom climbing a fish.
We still laugh every time we hear an Irish person say 'potato'. Apparently everyone else has heard this twice, but I haven't.
A nice meal topped off an excellent day. The train ride home was quiet and full of sleeping people.
I'm now exactly 10 days behind on uploading photos and writing about the trip!
Tags: travel
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