When you think of Belfast the main thing that comes to mind is The Troubles (at least if you are older than about 35.) It is central to the DNA of the place and the remaining political tension between Irish independence or British rule is writ large in many communities. But elsewhere Belfast is trying to reinvent itself beyond this singular narrative. There is construction everywhere, including a swish new hotel to bring tourists to the town. And the Titanic experience to give those tourists more to do than just The Troubles tours. Alas though, it is the Troubles and the division between the Falls and Shankill Road that brings people here not The Titanic or the Ulster Fry, if the amount of black cabs filtering up and down the Falls and Shankill Roads is anything to go by.
Our arrival in Belfast was easy – except for some confusion about the buses. There was a bus to the Europa bus centre which was almost right next to our hotel and then a local bus. Apparently, the blue bus for the Europa centre must have been part of some train/ferry bus deal or something because we were swiftly told the other, pink, bus was for us. The buses in Belfast look a lot like London buses except they are pink rather than red. Not sure why. Most of our bus journey in the dark was through the ports so there were a lot of port workers getting on the bus. The name of the eventual destination was different to where the driver told us to get off but he did announce when we arrived that it was the end of the line. After a day of travelling I was sincerely hoping it wouldn’t then be a long hike to the hotel. We lobbed right in front of Belfast City Hall which is quite an impressive Georgian building in contrast to a lot of Belfast. It is lit up at night and looks quite pretty (also not an adjective you would generally use to describe Belfast). Mercifully it was just a few blocks to our hotel – The Maldron Hotel (which appears to be an Irish chain). We dumped our bags and headed out for some dinner. We were tired, cold and hungry so we just settled on the first place we came across – Fybber McGees was quite the find. All dark wood interior and dimly lit like all good Irish pubs, it also had what you might describe as a typical pub food menu. Dan had been sceptical about the food in the UK and Ireland but if he hadn’t changed his mind yet, Fybber McGees did it for him. He had the steak and Guinness pie, which, like pretty much any meal you order in Ireland, came with mashed potato. (In some places you could add (or were given) a side of chips but this never really replaced the mash.) At home, potato mash seems to have gone out of favour – You might sometimes get it if you order bangers and mash but even that is not a common menu item these days. You are more likely to see celeriac, swede or cauliflower mash. Mash with every meal was a staple of my childhood so it felt nostalgic. It only served to reinforce that Ireland is thoroughly engrained in my family history and cultural upbringing if not in my DNA (despite the Scottish links from my mum’s side). I had the bangers and mash here and they were fantastic – really good quality pork sausages with thick, dark, onion gravy, just the way it should be. It was glorious. And all the better washed down by Guinness. I don’t know why but the Guinness brewed here does taste much better. It is smoother. It must be something about the way they add the nitrogen bubbles.
Keen to experience an Ulster Fry, with that Northern Irish staple – soda bread, we ventured to suitably Irish monikered diner Maggy Mays. I opted for the Full Fry which came with more carbs than any reasonable person should eat – an egg, a sausage, bacon, mushrooms, tomato, soda bread, potato bread and a pancake (the pancake isn’t a usual part of an ulster fry and they usually have black pudding). Dan opted for the Super Fry which came with all of that (x2 in the case of the eggs, bacon and sausage) and with the addition of baked beans The soda bread is a real Irish thing and particularly prevalent in Northern Ireland. It is essentially bread cooked using bicarb of soda like a cake, rather than yeast, presumably because yeast was in short supply. And Northern Irish potato bread is similatiar to the tattie scones of Scotland although not commercially produced and cooked in more butter.On day two (yes we came here twice) he had the sausage and egg wrap, with two actual sausages. They also do what they call a bap, which is essentially an egg and bacon roll. My breakfast was washed down with a pot of tea – very strong black tea – the way it should be so you can taste the tannin rather than drinking what is essentially light brown water. (Yet another sign of my culinary affinity with the Irish). The menu was quite extensive, including the drinks menu, presuming because we are in Ireland, included a pint of milk. Drinking milk like water with meals was also quite a feature of my obviously Irish influenced childhood so I couldn’t resist– I had a pint of milk (full cream of course) with breakfast on day two. [The Saints are Coming – U2 and Green Day. This is a very unusual collaboration – The Skids song was originally performed live as a duet between these two bands at to start at the opening game of the New Orleans football team after Hurricane Katrina and then released as a single. It shouldn’t work but it does.]
Sustained for the day, we set about doing our own tour of Falls and Shankill Roads. On my first visit here I had stuck with the Falls Road as I had already found that confronting. We started there this time and it was no less overwhelming. Murals here are of course very different to the mural projects revitalising industrial cities like Glasgow. They are long lived monuments to the troubles and to the political turmoil that persists for some, just slightly below the surface. First stop was the solidarity wall. In essence the struggle for Irish independence was an underdog struggle and Sinn Fein (and the IRA) aligned themselves to organisations struggling for their own freedoms. Now don’t get me wrong, the violence that was perpetrated by both sides in the troubles, including by the IRA, does not sit well with me. I, like many others I suppose, support the cause of Irish independence from Britain but not the method. The revolutionary leaders that have stood the test of time as heroes for a cause are those who did so without violence. That said, it is easy to see why the republican movement was aligned with, for example the struggle against apartheid, with unionism and also aligned with socialist parties and regimes. The solidarity wall features Nelson Mandela and #unblockcuba amongst other leaders and causes. Further on as we continued our run through the murals, including the infamous Bobby Sands mural, we came across a mural aligned with the Victorian Electrical Trades Union in Australia. This is about the time you hit the wall that runs between these two Belfast communities. No less confronting on my second visit 14 years on and 25 years since the signing of the Good Friday agreement. I understood why it remained in place 10 years on but it is hard to fathom this is still in place today. Reportedly. the communities like the peace of mind it brings to have the wall in place and have the gates locked every evening. This in itself is challenging in a 21st Century city trying to emerge from its past. In places along the wall where the gates are locked, there is a no man’s land that you would expect to find in 1980s Berlin or on the Korean peninsula. Granted the anti- crossing measures aren’t as harsh but they are still there – razor wire and solid steel gates included. The wall itself an already quite high concrete barrier doubles its height with the use of corrugated iron, reinforced on the Falls Road side. Then communities too are quite different with homes built right up to the wall on the Falls Road side. On the Shankill Road side, there is just the road and then a bunch of playing fields. Interestingly, the wall has no murals and very little graffiti on the Falls road side but on the Shankill road side, there is just a wall of modern graffiti
On the Shankill Road side there are less hand painted murals and more printed banners pasted to the gable ends. They were almost like solid plates (perhaps so they couldn’t be defaced). The emphasis here is less on individuals and more on the regiments. With phrases like ‘we will not have home rule’. There are also some murals of the royal family. Further into the area on the other side of Shankill Road you start to see some murals memorialising individuals. As you started to get closer towards the city, the murals began to change – with no politics to them, they were in the vein of the artistic murals that had revitalised Glasgow. As if to say “enough of the politics, we want to beautify our city in a way that leaves the troubles behind”. What began as an art competition is taking the artistic skills developed here over decades and building something better. Last time I was here, the conversations were all about why people, Northern Irish and visitors alike, couldn’t leave the troubles behind in defining the culture of Northern Ireland. On this visit, despite the dozens of black cab tours rushing about these communities, the rest of Belfast is largely just getting on with things.
We wandered back towards town. There is a massive tower block in Belfast – I am sure it was once, if not still, a public housing block. It has orange detailing and is surrounded by much lower buildings. It is like a beacon to orient yourself to. Belfast used to have a wheel – a much smaller version of the London Eye but they sensibly got rid of it over a decade ago. As we walked back to town, we knew we were nearly there when the tower was behind us. Next stop was St. George’s Market. The market had been operating as a market for a century or more – today it is like most modern stall holder markets – a mix of hipster foodie delights and interesting crafts. The difference with this one was the smattering of antique and second hand dealers selling all sorts of rare finds and bric-a-brac. Everyone else took cards but I am pretty sure these old guys would have only dealt in cash. We wandered around conscious that we didn’t want to weigh our bags down with too much Irish bric-a-brac at this juncture (although jewellery is always easy to carry and worth a look). What I did buy was a Christmas ornament – made of Irish driftwood and painted to look like a tiny Christmas pudding. Belfast is not a touristy town and while I am sure you can probably get a fridge magnet and postcard at the Titanic Experience, they aren’t really something you experience walking around. We also grabbed a bite to eat at the market –a couple of crepes – Nutella for Dan and traditional lemon and sugar for me (and because this was Ireland, it came, as a lemon and sugar pancake should, with butter). I also sampled a local food truck’s seafood chowder with Guinness bread – which was almost like a dark rye sourdough. It was fantastic. Dan had mac and cheese – readying himself for the US. Then we went on a pointless expedition on the Belfast train (which runs along a corridor down the side of the city to Adelaide Station. Dan is obsessed with sports gear from a label headquartered in Northern Ireland so we ventured out into the Belfast suburbs exiting the train platform into what is best described as an industrial area and walking about 15 minutes in very cold windy weather to what turned out to be a homecentre where the store was located next to next to a Harvey Norman. The kind of place not really designed for pedestrians. Dan’s mission was to see if he could find an instore bargain… Apparently there were better bargains to be had online.
After our trek, we chilled out for a while before heading to one of Belfast’s oldest (and most lauded) pubs for dinner – The Crown Liquor Saloon. Unable to resist sampling things, we ordered the baked camembert with relish and bread as a starter. The relish was exceptional and really made this dish. I decided it was time to order the traditional pub meal – on this island nation, fish and chips is almost a diet staple and the disappointment of the fish at the fried everything café in Glasgow had made me want to give it another go, And while it was pretty good, with a crispy beer batter, a decent sized slice of lemon (note to fish and chip shop owners – I am happy typo pay for extra lemon if it is on offer) and quite good tartare sauce, the fish itself was kind of tasteless. The flake or hake that we get at home is much tastier. Dan had wild boar pie. While dinner was solid, we both decided if we were in Belfast for longer, we would probably go back to Fybber MacGees. While our hearts were up for a big pub night before we left Belfast, our bodies weren’t playing ball so we went to bed relatively early in preparation for our driving tour of Ireland. [Orinoco Flow – Enya – you can’t have an Irish playlist without Enya or Clannad for that matter. This catchy tune opened up the ethereal sounds of Ireland to a wide audience in the late 80s. I have to admit I was a fan.]
It is true the Irish have the gift of the gab (which I am constantly reminded of) and the Northern Irish are no different. They also have a thick accent which is almost as hard to understand as a Glaswegian accent. And they talk faster. Our cabbie was your typical middle aged Irishman. He liked a chat and a good story. We started Northern Irish and Australian weather and somehow ended up hearing the story of an African visitor decades ago who was so cold he made the cabbie turn the heat up and close the windows. The story he was telling wasn’t finished when we arrived at the hire car depot so he just kept telling it. Eventually we paid the fare (after much mucking around with the card machine), signed the rental contract – in the UK they slug you extra charges for extra drivers, zero excess insurance and navigation, making the cost about double what you would pay in Australia – and we were on our way.
Fridge Magnets – 5 Postcards – 7 T-shirts – 2 Christmas decorations – 3
