Belfast

To be honest, Belfast and I didn't not start out on a good foot. I had booked a hostel for the four nights I was there a few weeks in advance through Lonely Planet. Given that this is a well known series of travel guides, I wasn't expecting any problems. But...I arrive at the hostel to find that it is closed, not open for business, mattresses piled in the windows and curtains in disarray. Luckily it wasn't too late I was able to find another hostel, but still, I was wary.

However, after that things went much more smoothly. Friday morning I went on one of those goofy double decker bus tours all around the city. After lunch I went to explore the Linen Hall Library (Belfast used to be the linen capital of the world, however, like the huge shipbuilding industry they used to have, this no longer exists) and the city center. That night I saw a movie theater on the Queen's University campus (seen above in the rain), about 3 minutes from the hostel I was staying at, so I finally got to see a movie in English, after two months of going without.

The next morning I also had something I'd been missing in France- a big, American style breakfast complete with cheesy eggs, bacon and a bagel. I walked around the university grounds (causing me to miss the UW- actually being back in the anglo-saxon sphere, as opposed to the francosphere, made me quite homesick) and the Botanic Gardens for awhile, happy that the sun was shining, as opposed to the rainy weather on Friday. Walking back up to the city center, shopping seemed to be the thing to do on a Saturday afternoon- it looked like a mall two weeks before the new school year starts. I did some browsing, but with the pound already giving my bank account a workout, refrained from buying.

Sunday was definitely the best day of the three. I took a bus around the County Antrim coastline, seeing some incredibly green countryside and watching the rain fall on the Irish Sea. (I tried to make my pictures do it justice, but am pretty sure that I failed miserably).