However we also connected with other aspects of Northern Ireland, with a focus on its more recent history
We started with a black cab tour through the Falls Road (Catholic / Nationalist) and Shankhill (Unionist / Protestant) parts of working class Belfast.
Our guide was a local who lived 50m from the peace wall between the two communities. Those walls still divide various parts of the communities down sectarian lines for a total of over 32km in different parts of Belfast with the highest being between the Shankhill and the Falls. The gates are closed at night to this day!
Peace gates / peace wall. The wall is pretty low at this point - it gets a lot higher in other places.
Thérèse at a section of the peace wall. The mural behind had only gone up the day before, but was already signed by a number of visitors (including us!).
One of the remaining murals on the Unionist side
A bridge over the river Lagan (our AIrBNB was in the building to the left)
A poster from the 1900s at the Titanic Experience (obviously for a Nationalist newspaper)
Titanic Experience
Giant’s causeway
Rural area near Cushenden
Street art, Portstewart
Portstewart town
Images from Bogside murals, Derry
Whilst we obviously lean towards the republican side of the argument, there is a second side - not everyone is happy with the Peace Process!
Mural in unionist part of Derry
But maybe popular culture will find a way out for us all ...
