Northern Ireland, Derry to Belfast

Giant's Causeway
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We arrived in Northern Ireland with no fanfare, no notice in fact that we were even in the UK, the only sign was to say welcome to County Derry.  However we did notice one thing different.... the roads were fantastic!!! There were road signs and more than one lane.. wow.....

We drove into Derry, or Londonderry depending on your preference and when we left the hotel we definitely noticed a lot more dodgy people around and a lot more barricaded stores.  We went into a nearby pub and the next thing we noticed was that more people seemed to be drinking Harp (brewed in Belfast) than Guinness and we also noticed that there were lots and lots of fat people!  The republic of Ireland in hindsight was quite a healthy build in general, but in the north there were plenty of overweight people and lots of blonds/es (again, a rare sight in the republic).

Northern Ireland is not the place for a political faux pas

Giant's spagetti and meatballs
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Derry seemed fine where we were, but i did almost make bit of a faux pas when i said to Jonno in the pub 'gee, there's a lot of orange people here' - purely in reference to all the bad fake tan (quite a common sight in all of Ireland) - but the look on Jonno's face made me realise very very quickly what I'd said... !

After spending the night in Derry we headed to Belfast.  We visited the Giant's Causeway on route and even though it was freezing cold and raining (it had been snowing earlier) it was a spectacular sight.  It really does confront the eyes as the hexagonal rocks and columns seem so regular shaped and consistent that surely it could only have been made by man, but it is so wild and daring that it should only have been made by nature.

Carrick a reid rope bridge
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The drive to Belfast was very pretty as it had snowed earlier and all the fields were white, with mountains, ocean and Scotland in the background.

We stayed the night in Belfast and found out very quickly that the international Irish dancing competition was on as all we heard was clunckedy clunckedy clunckedy in the hotel and all we heard in the hotel bar were American stage mums trying to psych each other out..

Next day we wandered around Belfast briefly and certainly noticed the amount of men, old and young with number 1 haircuts... We did a black cab tour of the Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods and it was really interesting to see the Protestant murals everywhere on the side of buildings and the Catholic memorials to the dead (civilian and non), as well as the massive 'peace' wall that divides the neighbourhoods.  The gates of the wall are still closed at night and the wall was increased in height in the last 5 years.  We didn't see much police presence, but that would have been different a few years ago. However we did heavily fortified police barracks all around Northern Ireland.