Belfast - after the Troubles

Belfast and Northern Ireland have had a tumultuous history. To me, Belfast was the bombed city, where Catholic and Protestants were at each other, where bombs and soldiers were a way of life and so was retaliation and on the television news at night.

In 1998 The Good Friday Agreement was finally signed after two years of talks and 30 years of conflict. This is one of the better things Tony Blair may be remembered for. The history is long and complicated.

We took a Black Cab tour of the Falls and Shankill Roads area and the famous murals. Gerrard, our driver was a wealth of information (from the Falls Road himself) and his childhood was marked with the scars on the conflict (including his leg from a car bomb) The history is fascinating, Shankill Road area is depressing and Falls Road, well I wouldn't want to go there at night either. The housing has been rebuilt, mainly because the rows of cottages were bombed out.

The murals represent many of the branches and factions of the IRA - a complicated history and the fighters for their causes and the victims. Bobby Sands, the IRA freedom fighter is probably best known for his 66 day hunger strike in the Maze prison in 1981- a film last year called Hunger, based on Bobby won an award at Cannes. Life is a high price to pay for your cause.

The peace wall pictured below divides the catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods in Belfast and divides this region of the city running for over 3 miles. It has gates and is open, but can be closed electronically and are often closed at night and in the 'marching season' and other memorial times. The barriers consist of iron, brick and steel walls up to 25 feet high, topped with metal netting. Houses on the Falls Road side of the wall have metal grates over the yards of the houses, as it is still common practice to have objects hurled over the wall.

Belfast is currently undergoing a huge regeneration and is a popular tourist destination now. Oh and George Bush is noted for his 'part in history' in war by the artists of Belfast. And you can even go and see where the Titanic was built!