April 27th

Our final driving day began this morning after another hearty "Ulster Fry" breakfast. We had a booked time at the Titanic Museum in the old shipyards quarter of Belfast and we arrived early and made our way through the self guided tour for over two hours. I had been twice before but there were some new additional exhibits to the tour including a three dimensional film of the decks from the engine room rising to the 3rd, 2nd and 1st class levels to the open deck. The whole experience was much better than I had remembered and is actually well worth the visit. There were samples of the crockery they had, samples of the carpets and drapes etc, and loads of photos and descriptions from the laying of the keel in the shipyard to her last moments before disappearing beneath the Atlantic Ocean on her maiden voyage..
I had prewarned everyone not to spend their money on the over priced, mediocre cafe inside and instead, we headed uptown to the commercial area around the City Hall. We parked next to the statue of Queen Victoria and split up for lunch. Our driver Paul and I had Subway, yes, in Belfast...actually quite good. As in other parts of Ireland, customers don't bus tables after they eat so the all the tables have previous diners crap all over them...the attendants must only come out occasionally to bus the tables.
We returned to the bus and we met up with our guide for the day, my old friend Mickey Gallagher who has lived in Belfast all his 81 years and has been well connected to the Nationalist side of the "Troubles" all of his life...that would be the Catholic Irish side, enough said. We drove up the Catholic Falls Road and stopped at many of the colorful murals painted expertly on the walls of buildings along the way, of the heros and events that took place over the last 100 years or so in the attempt to unite Ireland. We drove along the Peace Wall which was originally a large fence, like Trump's wall, that divided and kept the Catholics and Protestants apart from each other during the 1970's on up. There is definite talk about removing this wall but not yet as some people might remain vulnerable.
We also visited a monastery church in the area where secret talks were held by both sides prior to the final Good Friday Aggreement in 1998 being sorted out.
We went into Miltown Cemetary and looked at the graves of many IRA volunteers and all the graves of the Hunger Strikers who died in 1981. This, I suggested, is the Arlington National Cemetary for the Nationalist community inter North of Ireland though only about the size of two tennis courts. The Irish Tri Color of Green, White and orange flies proudly to their memories.
What some of our group decided was the most important event of our tour was my final surprise this afternoon. With Mickey's blessing we were allowed into Roddy McCorley's Social Club, a gathering place of mostly former active members of the IRA and the political wing of Sinnfein Fein . The building is a three story freestanding house once owned by family who owned the Belfast Celtic Soccer Club, long since gone by the wayside. The building was refurbished many years ago and opened as "The Roddy's". There is an amazing small museum on the third floor which houses all kinds of memorobelia from guns, to British Army rubber bullets, uniforms, all kinds of wooden items carved in Long Kesh prison etc. Some great old letters and photos.