Oh the fun we had!

Well, it really wasn't that much fun when my husband, Wayne, and I disembarked in Belfast, Northern Ireland from an Isle of Man ferry at 1:00 in the morning.  We found ourselves standing in the rain with no transportation to the hotel.  You see, taxi service in Belfast doesn't work quite like taxi service in the United States. Taxis don't hang around and wait for you to hail them.  They must be called and an appointment made for pickup.  We had no way of phoning for service. Our only hope was a miracle. A miracle came in the form of a quiet young lady standing beside us who inquired if we would like to share the taxi she had booked earlier.  Would we ever!  Fifteen minutes later we were checking into the Malmaison Hotel. Saved by an angel!

The rest of the trip to Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, however. was great fun and worry free.  Last year when traveling around the Republic of Ireland by car, we had only a brief, tantalizing taste of the northern reaches of the island and vowed to return for further exploration.  This September, our travels took us to Belfast, then the Isle of Man, back to Belfast, and finally on a driving tour of Northern Ireland, ending up back in Belfast for the flight home.

Since we were in Belfast on three different occasions, let me say a little about the capital of Northern Ireland. Because Belfast has a troubled history, I did not know what to expect.  The Peace Accord which brought a cessation of fighting was signed in 1998, only 21 years ago.  We were reminded of the "Troubles" on a bus tour of the city as the narrator pointed out evidence of the sectarian conflicts of the late 20th century.  I vowed to learn more about Belfast's history. (I'm currently reading Say Nothing, highly recommended.) But we did not find a city of glum residents.  On the contrary, everyone we met was friendly, inquiring where we came from, and welcoming us to their city.  (At least, I think that's what they were saying.  The Northern Ireland English dialect is challenging to pick up!)   

Our next stop was the Isle of Man, an island between Ireland and Scotland which is a self-governing British Crown dependency.  We spent the first night in the capital city of Douglas where we learned about the disc parking system. 

You see, on a small island, parking space is at a premium. You carry a disc in your car and dial it to the time you arrived so that a parking inspector knows if you have exceeded the two-hour parking limit.  Fortunately, a friendly inspector told us how to beat the system in order to park overnight by our hotel.

I love the leisurely pace of island life.  We stayed in an Air bnb apartment in the small coastal town of Port St. Mary. 

For three days, we pretended we were locals, shopping for groceries at the Co-op, having breakfast in a small, three-table bakery, and washing clothes at the laundromat.  We also found time for tourist activities such as riding a steam train,

visiting a reconstructed crofter village (they had two resident Manx cats and several many horned Loghtan sheep), and sitting by the ocean and watching a colony of seals at the Sound.

Our next adventure was a drive on the Coastal Causeway Route of Northern Ireland. I can still see and hear the waves crashing on the shore.  At a stop at a roadside park for coffee, we were welcomed by a group of locals and offered free cake to go with our coffee. One gentleman, a restaurant owner, gave us his card and offered us a free meal of fish and chips. Portstewart, an attractive seaside town, was our stop for the night.  Numerous shops had tempting displays of  heaped up ice cream.  Strollers on the promenade ate ice cream cones, even though the weather was nippy. 

A drive through many small towns, reminiscent of England, took us to a peninsula to the east of Belfast.  We stopped at a tourist information office to ask about accommodation for the night.  The very helpful personnel showed us many hotel possibilities.  When I saw a picture of the five-star Culloden Hotel and Spa, which reminded me of Downtown Abbey, I was hooked.  After all, these were our last few days in Northern Ireland. 

Culloden Hotel and Spa

The Culloden Hotel was the height of elegance. We checked in and passed through the drawing room on the way to our junior suite with a view of the garden and the lake.  The carpets were thick, the bed was king-sized with enormous pillows, and the chocolates delivered to our room each night were needless to say, scrumptious. The next day, we returned to the tourist information office to thank the personnel.  One lady said with a smile, "How did you enjoy roughing it last night?"

On this trip, we had several revelations concerning electronic devices.  First we discovered that our Kindle readers were useless because the cord we had been using to power them up was damaged.  I was especially affected, as the Kindle is my security blanket.  But I discovered the joy of reading local newspapers and tourist literature in hotel rooms.  We had also vowed not to use our iPhones except when we could find Wi-Fi.  And we succeeded!  We found that we were more engaged with our new environment because we weren't constantly reminded of home. 

Friendly people, green landscapes with a rich shade of green that you have to see to believe (after all, this is the Emerald Isle),

and too much to see and do in one visit.  You can understand why I say, "Oh, the fun we had."