A Day in Belfast

Hello, hello!

Right now we are in Belfast, we arrived safely and are staying at a hostel called Paddy's Palace... but trust me, it's no palace. Our dorm room is right by the front door and we suspect that our sleep might get interrupted by the all-night partiers! We will see. The flight here was super short and much less eventful than that last one, hehe. Tomorrow we get on our third and fourth airplanes when we fly back to Glasgow and then out to Barra in the Hebrides.

We are definitely looking forward to some R&R. Today we did a tour of Belfast and we saw some amazing things, like the peace wall, the famous murals and war-torn historical parts of town, not to mention downtown with all the shopping and pubs. Some of you warned me how expensive the pubs are, holy crow you weren't kidding! Today my lunch cost £14 which is about 29 bucks... for a burger and fries, oh and a Guinness!

Yes, I tried a Guinness... and those of you who know me well know that I don't drink beer, much less Guinness, which can only loosely be classified as beer. But I really wanted to try it here in N. Ireland, to do what the Romans do, as they say... let's just say that it was not my kinda thing. I did admirably, said Christine, but I was unable to even drink half of it. Yikes!

Tonight we are happy to relax back here at the hostel, as we are both exhausted. This morning we got up bright and early to get to the airport, and the bus stop we were told to go to (by 3 different people, no less) never actually produced the bus we needed and as a result we had to break down and get to the airport by taxi. On Friday we pick up our rental car so there will be no more taxis after that! Just expensive fuel. By far the best taxi driver we've had was the gentleman who drove us from Belfast City Airport to our hostel... he was hilarious!! We are finding the Irish accent significantly easier to understand than the Scottish, and this guy had us cracking up.

That is one thing that we are a little nervous about, driving on the other side of the road. I have almost gotten us lost twice because I was thinking traffic was going the opposite way from how I thought, and this afternoon I almost got shmucked by a bus when I looked the wrong way for cars before stepping out on the road. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know... rookie mistake. If I manage to survive being a pedestrian on these roads, the next challenge will be driving around! Please send us your best wishes... :P

Tomorrow we wake up early and head back to airport, stay there for a few hours and then catch out flight to Barra. There is a cousin of my grandmother's meeting us at the "airport" -- which is a beach. Our flight to Barra is the only scheduled flight in the world which lands on a beach. Should be interesting! I will get photos... I get photos of everything.

Thanks to those of you that have written short messages to me, it's nice to hear the updates from home and feel connected to y'all... I don't have time to write you back but I read all of them and it's great! :) Feel free to keep 'em coming if you get a chance to drop me a line.

Anyways, I gotta get going but I will email again sometime...
Hope you are all well,
Elaan