{"id":408,"date":"2008-12-01T22:13:57","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T22:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ireland.markciecior.com\/?p=408"},"modified":"2016-08-09T21:36:20","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T21:36:20","slug":"we-are-tourists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ireland.markciecior.com\/?p=408","title":{"rendered":"We Are Tourists"},"content":{"rendered":"

We didn’t quite get a feel for the “real” Belfast on Saturday so we took the standard tourist bus trip on Sunday.\u00a0 I was under the impression that we would ride on the lower<\/em> floor, inside<\/em> the bus.\u00a0 Once we got on, the rules were changed on me and we ended up on the second<\/em> floor of the open<\/em>-top bus.\u00a0 Katherine’s reasoning was “We’re only in Belfast once.”\u00a0 I couldn’t really argue with that, unfortunately.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the bus company’s garage had experienced a bit of a fire a few days ago and not all the buses could be stored in the garage.\u00a0 Our bus was one of the lucky ones that had been sitting outside all night.\u00a0 There was snow on the seats.\u00a0 The windows up front were completely frosted over.\u00a0 I was excited.<\/p>\n

Here are the highlights of the tour:<\/p>\n

Pictures 5-6: Albert’s clocktower is leaning four feet from the perpendicular because it was built on the soft, marshy mud of the river.\u00a0 Belfast, similar to Dublin, has managed to put one of its rivers inside a tube and bury it under the streets of the city.<\/p>\n

Picture 10: This was the dry dock where Titanic was built.\u00a0 It might not look very big, but this only held the lower third of the hull.<\/p>\n

Picture 11: Samson and Goliath are the names of these two enormous cranes.\u00a0 They’re used by the Harland and Wolff shipbuilders and are among the biggest cranes of their kind in the world.<\/p>\n

Pictures 12-19: This is the Northern Ireland Parliament building and associated grounds.\u00a0 It was placed five miles outside the city on a big hill.\u00a0 Picture us, on the top of an open-top bus, in the freezing cold, speeding down the highway to get to this site.<\/p>\n

Picture 23: The courthouse (picture 22) closed in 1997.\u00a0 The night it closed someone scaled the building and took the scale from the statue on top.\u00a0 It was sold the next day on eBay for 180 pounds.<\/p>\n

Picture 27: The Europa Hotel has the distinction of being the ‘most bombed hotel in Europe.’\u00a0 According to Wikipedia, it “was damaged 33 times by Provisional IRA bombs between 1972 and 1994.”<\/p>\n

Picture 28: After the bus tour we were quite numb and went inside this McDonald’s to warm up.<\/p>\n\n\t\t