Road Trip to the North

On Monday we headed up to Northern Ireland for two days. We rented a minivan so that our friend M could join us on our adventure. This time two decades ago, the idea of visiting Belfast, the Northern Irish capital city would have been a very faint one, before the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. Belfast was hardly on the map as a city to see! Apparently in the last 15 years the city has come out of its troublesome shell. I was a little nervous going up to the "north". When I was young no one ever talked about the "north" and it was a very unsafe place to visit especially for Catholics. 

It took about an hour and a half to get to Belfast. There were no border posts when we entered into Northern Ireland. We also did not need a passport to visit the north. The most visible changes are the color of the postbox is red, red phone booths, speed limits changes to mph as in Ireland its km, and the union jack flag is flown in most towns. 

A very short simple picture of how the Union Jack flag was designed. I'm not sure how the Wales flag gets incorporated in the Union Jack. 

In Northern Ireland they also have their own currency that you can't use in Scotland or England. Although all the countries in the UK all use the same currency, Northern Ireland and Scotland use different banknotes. In fact, each bank in Northern Ireland issues its own distinctive note. I found that very confusing! 

After a few wrong turns in the pouring rain we finally arrived at The Titanic Quarter in Belfast.