Orienting ourselves with the grisly history on Edinburgh

After the past night's raging, it was no surprise that Ruth and I were a bit hungover/exhausted this morning. We only ended up getting up because of a strange fire alarm that went off early in the morning. We grabbed a simple free breakfast downstairs at the bar before passing out for another few hours. I got back up around noon to get in a quick run before the walking tour at 1pm. I still wasn't feeling great but the excellent running weather and discovery of a 1.5 mile loop around Meadows Park made the run more bearable.

I got Ruth up when I returned, which has become somewhat of a ritual by now, and made our way to the walking tour. Again, we lucked out and got a really awesome tour guide, Brendan from Ireland (an Irishman talking about Scottish history was quite interesting because of the throughlines he drew like joint conflict with Great Britain). I won't recap everything from the tour but the highlights were Ruth volunteering to be an example of someone who would be tortured in Edinburgh's past, finding out the origins of "getting shit-faced", and finding out about the immortalized dog Greyfriers Bobby (who looks exactly like our little dog Donovan!). We met some nice people on the walk such as two girls from UNC-High Point (who of course Ruth shared mutual friends with given her enormous social network) and a nice woman from Boise. Brendan finished the tour in the Princess Street Gardens looking up at the castle and told us the truly epic story of how four Scottish college students from Glasgow returned the Stone of Scone, a symbol of national pride back to Scotland when they stole it from England. Overall, the tour was a really great historical snapshot and provided plenty of intrigue with its grisly details of torture, execution, ghosts balanced well with lighthearted stories like the one just mentioned.

This was more of a chill evening as Ruth and I watched Ghostbusters (ironic since we are in one of the most haunted places in the world) with more people from Chico State in the hostel's chill out room, got our discounted dinner at the bar downstairs of the hostel while watching the Eurocup match of Ireland and Croatia, and booked our travel/hostel's for the remainder of the trip. Tomorrow will be a big day of doing all the things that interested us on the tour today!

The Troubles, the Titanic, & the Old Irish men

This was definitely my best night's sleep yet as I got 8 solid hours and was up right at my 7am alarm to get in a run before our only full day in Belfast.
I headed out for my run with some great soggy mist conditions and ran an easy 4 miles down the River Lagan into a beautiful nature preserve before turning around. The greenery was just magnificent! I got back and got Ruth up so that we could make the most of the day. We decided to do a highly recommended Black Taxi tour of the city's murals. We were so lucky that we did this as we received an insiders perspective of Belfast's Troubles from 1967 to 2001 when the peace treaty was signed. Our driver, Shamus, had lived through the entirety of this time and, despite being a Republican Catholic, exposed us to and explained murals on both Republican and Loyalist sides of the Peace Wall. The most powerful moment came when he began pointing to people on a memorial wall that he had known and worked with (6/8 taxi drivers and others including his wife's father). He even shared that his wife had been shot but luckily survived. When I asked him how he lived through this fear of death on a daily basis he responded that he didn't live in fear since it was "just normal for him" until it really ended in 2001. I left the tour with a sense of just how much bloodshed politics and religion, especially when they are linked, can cause even in a relatively small city like Belfast.

Shamus was nice enough to drop us off at our next destination, the Titanic museum, for just a few extra pounds. This museum had just been redone to the nth degree with, clearly, tons of financial backing. The exhibits walked through the beginnings of Belfast industry to the intricate details of building the Titanic, to its eventual collapse and discovery deep underwater. I really enjoyed the stunning use of technology as a learning tool throughout, including surfaces and touch screen visuals (I know...I'm a geek ;)

After spending a solid 3 hours at the Titanic Belfast, Ruth and I meandered back towards the hostel to rest before going out. While back, we finished watching Finding Nemo on the iPad (cute movie) and got recommendations from our main man Greg about good Pubs in the area, which he was more than happy to talk my ear off about. We set off to check out the closer pubs that he recommended.

The first pub was in a back alley and already filled to the brim with what looked like older Irish locals getting hammered at 7pm on a Friday. We took a walk through the pub but saw no tables and felt quite unwelcome/out of place here. Thus, we headed to the next pub, one that was not even on the tourist map but had been highly recommended by Greg. Maddan's didn't look like much from the outside as it sat quietly in a back alley with just one smoking man out front. At first, we couldn't even get in but the smoking man helped us by ringing the buzzer on the door (wow quite a secret place we have here!). Upon entering we found a few locals, a big screen showing the Russia vs Czech Republic Eurocup game, and a really nice atmosphere. We sat down on some stools to have a HARP ale and watch the game but before long we had struck up an animated conversation with two experienced street performers, Mike (from Wales) and Thomas (from Ireland). They were a "real kick in the pants" as they spoke with us about dogs, American sports, and even a bit of American politics. Mike aided us in bashing the Seahawks and their horrific track record while Thomas told a fairly tasteless joke about Obama and Palestinians (we definitely sensed his British loyalist political views). Two drinks down and 2 hours later, Ruth and I were getting tired and hungry despite the entertaining conversation. We bid "Cherrio" to our new friends and head out in search of some food. Unfortunately, none of the pubs or restaurants were open at 9pm (we found they eat and party much earlier here than in Spain or other parts of Europe) so we ended up in the large Americanized mall called Victoria Square. Here we found the good ole TGI Fridays on the top level. We chowed on mozzarella sticks and beef wraps while surfing Facebook on the free WiFi. After dinner we were both tired and, despite the urge to hit more pubs on our last night in Belfast, we elected to go back to sleep. We knew we had a long day of bus & ferry travel to Scotland tomorrow.

Overall, our time in Belfast had been short but we got to do basically all the things we wanted, from the murals to titanic to pubs, and were still able to rest up for raging in Edinburgh.