Day 7 - Part I - Black Taxi Cab Tour

Prior to going to the Belfast Harbor Festival and seeing the Tall Ships we took a Black Cab Taxi tour which was arranged by our B&B host. I guess some of the BCT tours bring you to famous parts of the city but ours was 100% The Troubles. Our driver/tour guide picked us up and was excited because most tourists are in the city center area while we, it turns out were in West Belfast, a location which is all Catholic and was the heart of the IRA in Belfast (which I was unaware of when I booked the rooms). So instead of taking us to the couple of famous murals that he would typical END a tour with, he started out by taking us to murals and notable areas (AKA murder locations) not typically seen by tourists because we were starting th in a area that was such a hotbed of activity.

A few turns into the tour and we were at murals like these:

A couple of streets from our B&B (1st mural dedicated to the women of the IRA). The tour guide was literally forcing us to take pictures in front of the murals. I was extremely uncomfortable, can you tell?




The tour guide also brought us to a Catholic cemetery in West Belfast with graves from IRA volunteers and notable people from the murals. Although he encouraged us to take pictures, I do not feel that it is respectful to post them plus I was not really comfortable taking them in the first place. Then he took us to a strictly Loyalist neighborhood.
Seriously get us outta here!

FYI the murals have to be kept up routinely due to vandalism. The tour guide proceeded to educate us about The Troubles and how the Catholics (or Republicans) in Northern Ireland (who are the minority) struggled (struggle) for equality with the Protestants (or Loyalists) in Northern Ireland (although I am not sure that religion and party are 100% mutually exclusive). Although The Troubles supposedly ended in the 90's, violence and uprisings were still frequent into the 2000's. The wounds are fresh and the fences are still up. I am not going to go into detail but if you ever want to ask me about the tour, please go ahead. Kris and I both recognize that the tour guide was not neutral (how could he be, he was Catholic, grew up in West Belfast, and had family involvement in The Troubles) but we appreciated hearing history that we were not taught about in school. In fact, according to the tour guide, the Irish in Northern Ireland are not taught about it in schools either (remember Northern Ireland is part of the UK). In addition to the murals serving as memorials, they serve as a opportunity to teach the youth about their history. There are hundreds of murals throughout Belfast.

FYI - The "famine" is called The Great Hunger in Ireland. During the time of the blight and horrible starvation, Ireland was still exporting crops, cattle, and pigs to England to pay their landlords. Poor farmers primarily lived off of potatoes to feed their own families and when the blight came, they did not have access to food. Prior to The Great Hunger the population of Ireland was roughly 8 million but due to starvation, disease, and emigration it has never recovered and is roughly 4 million people.