We got up this morning, and packed up the bags again. I picked up our laundry (yay, clean clothes!) and we chilled in the common room for a bit. Then Meghan came to pick us up from the hostel to drive us into Belfast. It took probably about an hour to get into Belfast, and we got a pretty good insight into a young persons perspective on the troubles in Northern Ireland. Apparently it's still very bad, especially in Belfast, and if people knew that Meghan (who is Catholic) was dating Peter (who is Protestant), she would likely get a warning, then if they didnt break up, be shot dead! Crazy. When we got into Belfast, Meghan took us in to Peters shop, a body-building supplement shop, to meet him. We met him and hung out there for a while, used his printer to print our boarding passes for that night, then Meghan took us into the city centre of Belfast. We went in to matchetts music shop, where, guess what we found.... A left-handed mandolin!! Darren sat down to give it a play for a while to see if he could play it, and Lyle and I wandered round the rest of the shop. After a while of playing, we left to go get some lunch while he thought about it. We were a little disappointed in the sound and the feel of it after all, and although it was possible to play it like a guitar, it didn't really get much depth and dynamics to it... So we went to a place down the road called Voodoo Bar, which was an American style alternative bar. We got some food there - I got a pretty awesome bean burger, and Darren got a Jambalaya, which he said he'd always wanted to try. After lunch we went up the road to Primark, to try find some new clothes. I found one t-shirt after searching around for a while, then realised there was a whole other level of women's clothes! I couldn't be bothered with that, so I got my shirt, and we went back to the music shop. We had a look at a 1/2 size guitar in the rock shop up the road (still the same company), and Darren fell in love with it. It was a Taylor brand guitar, steel string and it sang beautifully. The only problem with it was the £250 price tag!!! We went back over to the classical shop that we were in before, and Darren had a play of a nylon string 1/2 size there, with a pretty average sound, but a £40 price tag. At the end of the day, we couldn't justify spending that much, so he ended up buying the nylon string. Too bad the mandolin idea didn't work out! Seemed like a lot of mucking around, searching in pretty much every music shop in Ireland, for nothing!! But at least we have an instrument now! After the purchase, we headed off, to walk back to Peters shop. It was about a half hour walk, along some pretty streets and bridges. Once we got back, we got in the car and Meghan took us out to Belfast International Airport and we said our goodbyes. We already had our boarding passes, so we didn't need to check in, but went straight to security. And that's where we lost our Vegemite the second time!! The first time we bought one, it got left in a hostel. This time, we weren't allowed to take it on the flight, cos the jar was too big. Just can't win with the Vegemite! Once we got through the security, we wandered around the airport for a while, talked to one of the workers to make sure we would be ok to take the guitar as carry on, then Darren and Lyle got some food and sat down, while I went looking round the shops, in search of a certain lead I've misplaced for the iPad. I didn't find one though. Maybe in Edinburgh! After a while, we made our way to the gate, and got on the plane. A pretty boring, but very short plane ride later, we touched down on Scottish soil! We got out of the airport and made our way down to the bus, and jumped on the airlink bus, which would take us almost directly to our hostel. We got there with no dramas, and checked into our hostel. It was a 16-bed dorm! The room wasn't crazy big either, they just crammed as many beds as they could in there! We found the few empty beds that were left, dumped our stuff and went out to grab some food. We walk up and down a few streets, seeing what was around. There were massive tram works on the streets around our hostel, so all the streets were fenced off, so to even cross the street we had to walk down quite a way. But it was still kind of pretty, all the buildings were really old on the top, with the shopfronts down below. The place we're staying in isn't really close to the centre, more the suburbs, so there wasn't much choice, but we found a few options. We ended up just getting fish and a mini pizza, and ate it back at the hostel, then collapsed into bed for a pretty ****** nights sleep. People were constantly in and out of the room, and Darren said he got woken up a few times through the night with drunk people coming back to the room, and talking and turning on the lights! So at least I got a better nights sleep than him!