Ireland Trip - Day 2
The next morning, my AirBnB host had invited me for breakfast, a fresh home cooked vegetarian Irish breakfast. His breakfast was the best breakfast I had all trip and I'm so grateful to him and his hospitality, it really made up for the car stress I had to deal with the day before.
I had a long chat with him, where he told me that he was also vegetarian, about his family, and how he was a metal-smith and his son is a writer for an Irish language magazine and how they had learned (after) that their ancestors were blacksmiths and scribes. He also told stories about his ancestors during the Troubles. And how his ancestors weren't even allowed to speak their own names in Irish. This is made me immediately think about the same tactics that the British used on the Indigenous people in Canada and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This would continue to be a trend I would learn about, which I will write more about later.
As I said farewell to my host, it was a short drive to Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, where I hiked up Sliabh Dónairt. At the saddle of the mountains, you could see the Mourne Wall (which I jokingly called the Great Wall of Ireland). The wall is ~31km long and was built in the early 1900s and is meant to surround the catchment area of a local reservoir to prevent roaming livestock from entering.
The hike into the valley was beautiful and sheltered from the wind, and at a steady incline. Once I reached the wall, the hike continued alongside the wall, up steep stone steps towards the summit. The winds were so strong -- thankfully the wall provided shelter from the wind. The very windy summit provided rewarding views of the other mountains and valleys in the area, and allowed you to see just how far the wall extended.
I had planned to hike a couple other mountains in the area but slipped going down the slippery stone steps (my trail shoes are notoriously bad with wet rocks) and scraped my whole forearm and elbow. So I headed down the mountain to get cleaned up.
After strolling around NewCastle a bit, I was then on my way to Belfast! The only place that I wanted to see in Belfast was the Peace Wall (another Great Wall of Ireland?). The peace walls were built in 1969 to minimize conflict between Catholics (who identified Irish) and Protestants (identified as British).
They would close the gates when tensions rose.
On one side of the wall, there were murals in support of the Queen and the UK, on the other side murals of civil rights and solidarity with other causes.
For dinner, I headed to Jumon, a well recommended vegetarian place in the city centre that served hip Asian fusion food. I ordered some eggplant spring rolls and a spice bag (not realizing it was all fried food). Spice bags are an Irish-Chinese food that are kind of like masala fries, but seasoned with five spice, chili, msg and include other fried things too. It was pretty good, but I don't think I had drank enough to properly enjoy it! With mostly everything else being deep fried as well, I decided I was done with my meal there.
After strolling through the city centre to walk off all the fried food, I made my way to East Belfast to check into my AirBnB. The area seemed much quieter than the city centre and I took the opportunity to visit a local pub and try to soak in some local vibes.
I stepped into a local pub that my AirBnB host recommended and a group of three guys greet me and ask me if I could take a photo for them. I then grab a seat at the bar, order up a pint and start getting serenaded by the three guys beautifully singing along tunes from the jukebox. I only stayed for one drink but was thoroughly entertained the entire time.
On my way back from the pub, I noticed that Tete Wyn, a really well rated African restaurant was still open, so I popped in to order a small nibble. Toronto has a lot of Ethiopian places, but most other African places usually don't have vegetarian options. I ordered some jollof to eat there and some okra soup for breakfast the next day.
Being late at night, I was the only one there and ended up having a conversation with the owner. He told me that he used to work for Ford Motors in London, was voluntarily laid-off 8 years ago, taught some English in South America, met politicians and almost became the headmaster of a school there. His sister got a job as a doctor in North Ireland after Brexit (because all the EUers left), his mom moves there too, so he decides to as well, opening up a restaurant for fun. He also told me some hyper local stories about riots that happened just outside his shop, and stories about the ridiculous sorts of racism he's received from some of the folks in the area.
I shared with him my parallels of being tired of working for big (ish) tech, wanting some time to explore other opportunities and the idea of moving to a small city -- all things that I had been contemplating and calculating throughout my trip. He offered some words of wisdom and encouragement which I really appreciated.