The streets of modern Belfast are a curious site.  There is some nice modern art and the streets are very friendly during the day.  However, you occasionally see a police car with cages all over it, like some sort of reclaimed prop from Mad Max.  At night near our hotel downtown, the whole town transformed as metal doors closed over the front of EVERY business.  It became this quiet ghost town, and definitely gave us a bit of a chill thinking about what it must have been like here during the Troubles.

And then there’s Falls Rd and Shankill Rd, the famous nationalist (Catholic) and loyalist (Protestant) areas, respectively.  They are separated by only a little distance and a large fence known as the peace line.  We had breakfast in a section of a restaurant that was empty, but for 3 people at the table next to us.  They struck up a conversation (though I probably couldn’t understand a third of what they were saying, given a heavy North Irish accent).  The couple were essentially Catholic missionaries, and they had befriended a former IRA bomber who’d spent 14 years in prison (I didn’t get the impression he was proud of his actions).  They gave us a hard time for not having Guinness for breakfast on a Sunday.  The whole experience was  surreal.  Only in Belfast.