Greetings readers, as usual I took a small break from writing to allow life to happen, so I would have some new experiences to share.
Since I've moved into the city centre here in Dublin, I find myself in awe constantly that I live here. Sometimes I'm afraid its all just a dream and I'll wake up one day and be back in the US. I'm really loving this experience so far though, Dublin is definitely growing on me pretty quickly too.
Max came to visit me from Holland last week and we had quite a few adventures over the course of a week. I still had college and work in between but we managed to go out clubbing a few nights, and also attended Ann's birthday party, then on Sunday night we headed up to Northern Ireland. Belfast had long been on my list of places to see in Ireland, ever since I first got here in 2006 it intrigued me.
We arrived at about 11 pm at night and since it was our first time there we were quite lost as to where to go. We knew we needed a hotel and there was one that I called earlier in the day to make sure they had availability but we had no clue where they were located. We spent about 2 hours that night wondering the streets of Belfast and took some great pictures of the buildings and the city. I realized right away that it was a very different looking city than any of the ones in the Republic of Ireland. Belfast looks a lot more like Glasgow or Manchester in that it has very Victorian architecture. The next day as we explored the city I also realized something that stood out to me after a few hours. Belfast was very homogeneous, where as in Dublin its not uncommon to see different people of various races and nationality in a short walk, that didn't seem to exist there. That night Max and I decided to go out and enjoy the nightlife and it seems that city has a lot to offer in that department. Granted we missed the weekend there so we figured it would be a dead monday night, but how wrong we could have been. The club was packed pretty much wall to wall, and the atmosphere was great. After visiting Belfast I'd have to say it ranks very highly on my list of recommended places to visit.
The picture above is one that I took the first night we arrived, it is city hall which is located directly in the city centre, and was quite a breath taking thing to come across as we walked through the city that night.  ¶ 10:10 AM