Black Taxi Tour at Night

After we got back from our tour to Giant's Causeway, we hopped right into our black taxi for a tour with George. George was a great tour guide, and even though it was late and we could not take pictures of everything, it was very informative.

The first place we went with George was to a Protestant section of town. The neighborhood was very cheerful, despite a few alarming murals. Murals are everywhere in Belfast. Some of them were nice (like the Hope one above) but some were a little depressing or even scary.


This mural in particular is startling. It features a British army guy aiming a gun at whoever comes into the neighborhood. It is painted in such a way that it seems the guy's eyes and the gun follow you wherever you walk. It is there to remind everyone who comes in that they are entering Protestant territory. George said that the people who grew up in Belfast don't pay any attention to it because they've been looking at it every day of their lives. I still think it is scary.

Next, George showed us the peace wall that still separates Protestants from Catholics. To this day, some of the gates between the two sides are closed at night. There are ways of getting from side to side, but they are heavily guarded with security cameras and the gates can be shut at a moment's notice should anything go awry. We took a picture of all of us by the gate separating the two sides of the city.


The wall extends as far as the eye can see. It's covered in graffiti, which is mostly people leaving their own little messages for peace. George told us that some organization recently polled the people on both sides and a large majority of them said they felt safer with the wall up. So, there's no talk of taking it down yet, but things are definitely getting better there.


George pulled a stash of markers out of a secret compartment in his taxi and we all got to sign the wall. It was cool reading all the messages of people who had been there before us and leaving our mark for others after us to read.

This is my message. Short, sweet, and to the point. Really, I just could not think of anything to say. I figured this works as well as anything else.


We crossed onto the Catholic side and saw many more murals. There are murals commemorating all the major events in Northern Ireland's history. There are also some of current events, such as the depiction of George Bush above. It was dark at this point, so the pictures did not turn out very nice, but the bottom of the mural says "America's Greatest Failure."


After our tour, it was very dark and we had not eaten dinner, but we had to stop and take a picture of George. He was so nice to us, he recommended a place to eat dinner too, and it was delicious.

We tried to find a passerby to take a picture of all of us, but literally no one was around, so we did it ourselves. We had two cameras going, so not all of us got the memo of which one to look at, but I think it's a nice photo anyway.