We woke up our last morning in Dublin both SICK, so it was a herculean effort on our parts to get ready, pack, check out, haul ourselves and our luggage (yay for packing light!) across the city and find our way to the train station, which was under construction and most confusing. Thankfully, we survived in a rather “my throat hurts” kind of silence using a lot of gesturing and facial expression with each other– I’m sure others found us amusing or were frightened. In any case, we settled into our seats on the nice train and enjoyed a 2 hour ride north to Belfast. I enjoyed the gorgeous, green countryside out our window while Andy slept.

A young man with a THICK Belfast accent sat somewhere behind and apparently had no volume control, as he proceeded to talk and laugh loudly the whole way. It would have been annoying, but his accent was so cute and his exhuberance so contagious that the entire train car got the giggles.

We didn’t have much of a clue as to where to go once we arrived in Belfast, but thankfully our very basic map helped us realize that Belfast is a pretty straightforward and small city. I recognized a few landmarks (the Europa Hotel, which uses to be Belfast’s ONLY hotel and is one of the most, if not the most, bombed hotels in the world) and we managed to find our hotel. It was on the other side of the city, which would be awful if we were in London or Paris, but as we were in Belfast, we made it in 30 minutes!

Our hotel was in a leafy brick neighborhood and the inside was a lovely business hotel fancy enough for wedding receptions. We loved our room, which included a bath tub and my favorite– room service!!! We met up with our Belfast murals tour guide outside our hotel and despite a severe rain shower, learned a bit of history and saw the murals relating the events and key people involved in The Troubles. We opted out on taking mural pictures, as I have a bunch from my last trip, you can find them online, and did I mention the torrential downpour that was impressive even for us Seattlites?

I did take a shot of a mural painted on the peace wall– I was impressed by the artist’s ability to recreate Picasso’s Guernica, as well as make a political statement about war of all kinds, without saying a word.

After we dried off at the hotel, we met up with Andy’s stepsister Lisa, who lives outside of Belfast with her husband and two girls. I loved that she had both a midwestern and Belfast accent! We met the family and NEVER TOOK A PICTURE– we suck!!!! Sorry Sue and Bob! Maybe we could photoshop one? We delived Seattle-appropriate gifts and then Lisa took us out for dinner at the Lobster Pot in Strangford, a lovely little coastal town. We chatted for hours and Lisa and I discovered that we must of been separated at birth, due to our similar opinions and mutual love of cartoons from our childhood (you may now begin singing the theme song to “Gummi Bears”, but don’t come crying to me when you can’t get it out of your head!). We walked around town a bit:

On our way back, we stopped at Downpatrick to view where St. Patrick is supposedly buried. What a lovely view from the cemetary!

So, not a high volume picture day, but we made up for it the following day!