Catching Up SLOWLY!

Friday, June 1 – Day 4 (Edinburgh to Belfast)

We got up early this morning to enjoy a cup of tea and surf the internet to make future accommodation reservations, starting with that evening in Belfast. Unfortunately, our hostel offered no place to leave our luggage while we explored the town, so we had to make a special trip to the train station to drop our bags there.

We had hopes of fitting in a tour of the Edinburgh Castle and the underground “vaults”’ before we had to catch our first train of the day. However, all of the vault tours were booked through 12:40pm and we had to be on a train at 1:30, so we’ll have to save that experience for another trip.

The Edinburgh Castle was amazing! Here is a picture of Rich as we stood on the esplanade of the castle before we bought our tickets… The castle is an 11th century hilltop fort with incredible views of the city below (seen here)…
This is a picture looking out over another part of the city as a fog rolls in... The castle comes complete with Scotland’s Crown Jewels, a royal residence, Romanesque chapel, war memorial, and military museum. Here Rich and I stand on the castle grounds between the third and the fourth gates that protected the castle from enemies. Up above us is St. Margaret’s Chapel, the oldest building in Edinburgh…

After the castle, we took a leisurely stroll back to the train station to catch our first train at 1:30pm. From Edinburgh, we had to connect in Glasgow (with 30 minutes to walk from Queens Station to Central Station downtown) to catch a 4:30pm train to Straenrear where we were to take a 7:50pm ferry which had us into Belfast at 9:30pm. Here we say goodbye to Scotland and the UK as the ferry heads over to the Republic of Ireland…

When the ferry landed in Belfast, we found ourselves in the middle of an industrial shipping yard with no public transportation. We decided to walk into town (just about a half mile) to catch a metro out to our hostel. As we reached the edge of the city, we saw a little place on the corner called “The American Bar.” As we walked closer, one of the bar patrons came outside to have a smoke (the Republic of Ireland recently passed a no smoking ordinance…I like the place already!) Anyway, she asked us if we were lost and we told her we were trying to make our way to the metro. She proceeded to give us directions in a language I can only guess was rapid English…then she decided maybe those weren’t the best directions and called out another patron who gave us similar directions in a similar tongue. By the time all was said and done, there were three of them outside, they decided that the directions would do us no good because the metro had stopped running for the night, they called us a cab, and one of the ladies bought us each a Guiness. Here we are in The American Bar with some of our new friends… People in Belfast are really nice!