Ireland - Belfast

This was our only full day in Belfast, so we took a "hop on/ hop off" bus ride around the city in order to see what interested us. We could then take a later bus to the place we wanted to visit and then hop on to come back to the hotel. A guide was on the bus with us indicating points of interest and giving us some historical background.

A major theme of his talk was the political struggles Northern Ireland has gone through and that still exist today. These gates that separate a Protestant neighborhood from a Catholic one are opened each morning for travel but then closed and locked each evening to prevent any possibility of conflict. The fence runs for three miles between the neighborhoods. Other neighborhoods have learned to integrate different peoples but there are still some that hang on to the old hates.

Bonnie and I went to look at another side of Belfast. C. S. Lewis, one of our favorite writers, was born in Belfast and spent his early years there before moving to England to continue his schooling and later teaching.

We went to this statue of him in front of a local library. The statue is supposed to be Digory in front of The Wardrobe. We tried to get into Narnia but sometimes the magic just doesn't work.