After saying farewell to the last of our fellow travelers on the tour, Mom and I took a taxi to the train station and headed north to Belfast. The train ride was only two hours, although work on the tracks required us to transfer and spend half of that time on a bus.
We arrived into Dublin and got our bearings around the city centre, changed over our money to Sterling (Ireland operates on euro whereas the North uses British pounds) and then booked a black Taxi tour which had been recommended to us by others who had been to Ireland https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g186470-d2705984-Reviews-Belfast_Famous_Black_Taxi_Tours-Belfast_Northern_Ireland.html
The words that other tourists use in the TripAdvisor reviews in the link above are apt: this tour was eye opening as was our visit to Belfast more generally. While our coach tour guide Tony had shared with us some of the politics and division in Ireland, driving around and witnessing some of the 45-foot fences and locked gates that separate the Unionist-Protestant from the Republic-supporting Catholics really emphasized that this is a country still with a lot of tension.
Our helpful Black Taxi Tour guide Martin filled us in on the political conflict known as “the Troubles” (this seems like a quaint word when you consider the seriousness) which I think is helpful to read about here as the situation is so complex that it’s not easily summarized on a vacation blog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles. Our tour guide mentioned that the rest of the world doesn’t really know the full story of this unrest and I agree: certainly, my eyes were opened. Also, a big topic of conversation now, especially with the entry of new British PM Boris Johnston into office while we were on the tour, was the continuing impact of Brexit on Ireland, something I feel newly educated to watch out for in the coming months.
With this new perspective as backdrop, I felt meditative that evening as we returned once again to the hub of Irish life for more Whiskey in the Jar and other cheery earworms in a pub called The Rusty Saddle across from our hotel.