3/5/08

Yay a self service laundry! We have spent three weeks in Ireland and
couldn't find one anywhere. We'd left our riverside pub carpark about
0830 to check out the botanic gardens before our political tour which
starts at 1100 and there it was, brilliant! This is a bit easier than
hand washing!!!!
With that job done, it was a quick hop across to West Belfast and
Falls Road. Falls Road is the predominantly
Catholic/Nationalist/Republican area, while the next main street up is
Shankill Road which is the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist area (these
were the terms that our guide used - he did advise us that he would
try to be objective as possible, but at the end of the day he was a
Nationalist. I think considering the number of plaques he showed us
that beared the names of friends he knew that were killed by either
the British Army/Police or Loyalist's or even the IRA itself, he did
quite a good job at at least trying to be impartial).
We took a 2 hour walk up Falls Road where we got a very informative
explanation of the history of the troubles, which finished at the
Catholic cemetery and the numerous graves of people far to young to
die. We did ask him was he going to take us across to the Shankill
Road area, he advised that we would be fine over there, but he had a
large enough profile (he was a prisoner during part of the troubles,
although he didn't go into explaining why) that even today it was not
safe for him to go into the Loyalist area - it definitely shows that
while there has been a cease fire for over 10 years, there are still
some deep scares that may take years (or even generations??) to heal.
There is even still a barbed fence that separates the two areas.
With that sobering thought, it was off to Dublin to complete our
circle of Ireland and visit my (Daniel) old boss Carmel and her
husband Chris!!
However - Getting to Dublin wasn't as straight forward as hoped, and
right now I'll cut a long story short (the long story is the next blog
entry), we managed to run out of gas and were saved by a couple of
very very helpful Irish bikers. We even got to a ride on their
bikes!!!!