PAUL

We were in Belfast on April 20, and therefore a Sunday, so the streets of Belfast were incredibly empty. In fact it gave the whole town a slight eerie atmosphere. We wanted to learn a bit more about the conflict in Belfast and so we decided to go in search of the murals on Falls Rd and Shankill Rd. What we found was a real eye opener. First, on the "catholic" Falls Rd there are many murals that comment on very recent political issues in the world and not just the conflict in Belfast. On "protestant" Shankill Rd the focus was largely loss of lives resulting from the conflicts. The murals were usually painted on the sides of buildings at the end of a block of shops and so often only became visible once you'd walked right up to or past them. Heading back into the city area, we saw a lot of graffiti, however, rather than tags most of it was statements about political and local issues, apparently from reasonably intelligent people, and so was quite different to what you'd usually expect.

In the city all the shops were closed, but we were happy just to wonder around and see some of the local sights. The City Hall was a massive and impressive building complete with Queen Victoria statue, while the queen's consort, Prince Albert, also features in Belfast at the slightly leaning Albert Memorial Clocktower.

For the afternoon, we took a 20 minute train out to the Ulster Folk and TransportMuseum. We decided to give ourselves plenty of time and so limited our visit to the FolkMuseum. This was one of our favourite things in Ireland. The "Museum" is in fact a collection of buildings from Ulster's (the county) history. The buildings range in date from the 18th century through to the 20th century. Some are buildings that have been "relocated" brick by brick from their original site while others are replica constructions. On the recommendation of the visitor info lady (who kindly allowed us to leave our rather loaded up backpacks in the office), we went to the "rural" section first. The buildings included a forgery, farm houses/cottages and a guildhall. Many of the cottages had their fireplaces lit and the farm houses came complete with animals (I had to check Li didn't smuggle one of the little lamb's that followed her around out under her jumper).

Then we went into the "town" area and saw basket weaving, bread making and fabric weaving (it's impossible to describe how they do this in less than 1000 words so if you want to know you'll just have to ask). There was also a post office, church and police barracks along with many, many other buildings. We ended up spending over 3 and a half hours here and were glad we did.

Finally it was back on the train and then the bus to catch the plane to take us back to Leeds, ready to start another week of uni where we'd answer the question of "what did you do on the weekend?" with "oh, you know, just the usual."