We spent today walking around Derry and one of the places we walked to was the Bogside area where the Bloody Sunday confrontation of 1972 occurred. I remember hearing about this as a teenager and it struck me now that here was a modern western country struggling with civil unrest which resulted in the death of thirteen people…hard to believe. A group of artists, called the Bogside Artists, have painted murals at the end of some of the housing blocks in the area to commemorate those that died on Bloody Sunday and at other times during "The Troubles". It was very distressing to read the story behind each of the murals.

Derry is a walled city, so we took a stroll around the wall taking in the history of the different gates along the way. It was while reading one of these signs that a group of six men asked if we would take their photo for them. They indicated that it needed to be taken fairly quickly, and with that opened the bags they were carrying, took out maroon sashes with badges on them and put them around their necks. I quickly took the photo and with their permission quickly took one on my camera. They then whipped the sashes off and put them back in their bags, said "Thanks" and took off.

I've since learned that they would have been part of the Apprentice Boys of Derry Association. The original Apprentice Boys were responsible for closing the City Gates against enemy forces (England) in 1688. I guess as Northern Ireland is still part of the UK, this association would not be popular in Northern Ireland.

We'd planned to have any early night in preparation for our flight to Krakow Poland, but this was thwarted by a very inefficient clothes dryer. The hostel offered a laundering service so we splurged on the service and left heaps of clothes to be washed and dried. When we got back that night our clothes were still in the dryer in another building and we were given the key to collect them when they were dry…which took forever. We checked on them four or five times, each time emptying the water collection area of bucket loads of water and it wasn't until around 10:30pm that they were finally dry and we could go to sleep.