Everywhere you look, you see the Union flag, even London and Edinburgh doesn’t have that many UK flags all over the city.  I don’t even think that half the people in city is as patriotic as the flags represent. Well Northern Ireland is known for the troubles and the riots against the UK.  The problem is that there were several British colonies a few hundred years ago in Northern Ireland, so it must remain under UK rule.  There are disputes that half the people living in Belfast argue that they’re British, and the other half of the people see themselves as Irish.  The troubles comes from most of the Irish riots against the British, believing that Northern Ireland should be a part of the Republic of Ireland, not the UK.  A very common trend I found that the countries under the UK (Northern Irish, Scottish, and people of Wales), are not very happy to be under Great Britain rule, and they would like to be their own independent country, but it would seem that Britain is too powerful to rebel against.  It was also a problem with religion (like always… -_-).  Half the people in the city are protestant, and the other half are roman catholic.

Anyways Belfast’s history is mostly bloodshed, and there are continued riots and rebellions yearly around the city.  For goodness sake, the police drive armored vehicles to prevent being bombed or shot at.  But aside from things like violence, Belfast was the city the Titanic was built, and it was built to transport passengers from England to New York in 1912.  lol, I heard most of the flaws of the Titanic was because of the English, not because the Irish builders.  The city had a huge emphasis on public tourism around the Titanic.

There are things in the city hall that was meant to go onto the Titanic, but it didn’t, so fortunately it was saved unlike the ship.

Well we went on a free tour of the city, and the tour guide talked about the most famous places around the city such as buildings, cultural district, and some history, which I thought was pretty grand.

Here is an image of the British Union flag (top) and the Northern Ireland flag (red & white).

These flags are all over the city, posted to every lamp pole and on every street.  Also there was marches around the city all day.(right)

Here is an image of the streets of Belfast, looks like a pretty modern city(right). We stayed in the Vagabond hostel and everyone there were pretty nice, it was also a very nice hostel (bottom images):

And this is the view from my bed (protestant church I think):

Here are some more monuments, structures and buildings around the city.  The background to most of these monuments are symbols of peace and hope for a less violent future for Northern Ireland.

After the tour of the city’s history, I got some grub, and set off to see the museum of Belfast.  On my way towards the museum, there the University of Belfast, Queen’s University (top left).  It was truly a magnificent University (at least on the outside) lol, but I’m sure it’s a great school as well.  The museum was right next to the University, and the botanic gardens, but the museum like any other museum, so I have nothing more to say about the museums.  The botanic gardens were nice.. I found rose called an electron!

The most important building in the city: The city hall building.  Unfortunately it looks like I forgotten to take a picture of the entire building on the outside but I have many pictures of the building on the outside areas, and inside the building. lol.  Here’s a side of the building (they were doing a gathering event to honor the dead in this picture)

The interior reminds me of the US capitol building in DC, but not quite as big.  Here are some pictures on the inside:

Sorry about the late update… I was in Belfast two weekends ago, I just haven’t had enough time to update.  This past weekend I was in Edinburgh, Scotland!  I’ll blog about the Edinburgh trip before the end of this week, while I still need to blog about the journey at Giant’s Causeway!

Till next time! Cheers!