Ireland - Day 1

Early start as we flew out of Birmingham at about 7:20am. Quick flight to Dublin - around 50 minutes and off to find our rental car.

We ordered a VW Golf (I thought) but was a little disappointed when car was Kia Cee'd. Had to go to other part to pick up a car seat for Madison. The seat wasn't there so had to wait for it to show up, and when it did it was unsafe. They gave us a new one and about 90 minutes after we got there we were on our way.

From Dublin we drove to Belfast City Centre. Since the "troubles" have ceased, Belfast has a new lease on life and has new buildings going up everywhere. It's not what you would call a pretty city, but given the history, that's understandable.

We did the "bombs and bullets" taxi tour. This is a tour around the trouble spots of the cities bad old days, including the incredible murals that you have no doubt seen before. The town is divided into two sections, the Catholic side and the Protestant side. It is divided by a 20ft high "peace" wall, as in keep the peace rather than create peace. The wall is still standing today. Both sides are almost mirror opposites, with the bunting (little flags etc) on the Unionist side being red, white and blue and flags of England Scotland and Wales, and the Ulster unionist flags, and on the Republican side the colours are Green, White and Orange.

It's all very surreal and I'm glad we went, but I really can't get my head around the level of hatred, death and I guess courage that was prevalent at the time. Personally, I don't have a view one way or the other, I prefer to think about the needless tit for tat killings and the innocent people that were caught up in the middle of it all, just trying to go about their lives. These people are the real heroes in conflicts such as this, and are the people we should be remembering.

Anyway, it had a profound effect on both of us, and I guess it drives home how good most of our lives are, and that perhaps we take it all for granted. Food for thought perhaps.

After the tour we had a bite to eat, and drove to Derry for our first night.