Ireland Travel Skills Part 3

Two different points of view, depends on where you were born. This little girl was the hundredth victim of The Troubles, she was killed accidentally by a ricochet bullet. When the mural painters painted this and when I first started going here, the butterfly was blank and the gun was black and solid. They said "if we ever feel that peace has taken hold, we will finish this mural" and about five years ago I went back and I'm telling you, I was moved almost to tears because suddenly the mural had been finished -- they put the colors of life into the butterfly, they broke the gun, and they pointed it towards the earth, meaning the guns are dead. And, you know, things are, you know, not, you know, perfect, obviously -- there's still sectarian tensions -- but getting much, much better https://casinoslots-ie.com/neteller. Two communities reaching out to each other, hands across the divide, the symbolism here.

Hopeful. My friend Stephen McPhilemy, in the old days, we would take our walks up here and we'd see British military towers and troops on patrols and listening-posts up here. We were walking around, it's only about ten years ago, and this camera was panning around, watching us, and so Stephen said "don't worry everybody, just relax and turn to the camera and wave" so we all turned, 25 of us, and we wave, right, and all of a sudden the camera stops and the little windshield wiper then goes [mimics a wiping gesture] -- the guy's waving to us. You know, he's just a bored conscript going "huh, let's see if there any pretty girls on the tour, today" right?

By the way, this has gone now too, but I just had to show you a photograph of the way things used to be. Now, in the North, I quite often get around by train, and I was dying for a cup of coffee here in the Derry/Londonderry train station. I walked inside, there was no place to buy a cup of coffee except this: And you know what?

It tasted just like coffee out of a vending machine. So you know, we look over there, we think "leprechauns," they look over here, they think "Starbucks." Okay, you can tell which neighborhood you're in -- red, white, and blue, red, white and blue colors all over, "God save the queen" -- you know that this is a unionist town. Red, white, and blue curb stones and the Union Jack flag, red, white, and blue bus stop, red, white, and blue tree, and get your hair done like the Queen, okay.

So you know which side of the fence you're on. And then we like to stay in a town like Portrush, up on the northern coast. A nice little relaxed town near Bushmills Distillery, the oldest whiskey distillery in the world, take a hike at the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, beautiful Northern Irish coastline up there, the Giant's Causeway is another protected area here, with this unique geology here. Just fantastic scenery in the north. Do go to Northern Ireland, it's beautiful up there. One of my favorite castles here, which is Dunluce Castle on the northern coast.

You can see Scotland on a clear day across the water there. And last but not least, we're heading into Belfast. This is the city hall of Belfast, this was bombed during the war, the shipyards were bombed during the war, the Luftwaffe saw the shipyard might of the north and they were trying to, you know, destroy the British war effort, which Belfast was a big part of. Again, just to mention again, it's not about religion, it's about whether or not you want to be British or Irish. Religion is brought into it by those who want to stir the pot and stir up trouble.

Now, this is their Northern Irish parliament building and the reason that the flags are at half staff is because I took this picture on 9/11. We all remember where we were and this is where I was, and the people of the North could not have been friendlier to us because they'd been living through 25 years of the possibility of terrorism, so they were very sympathetic to what we were just encountering, really, for the first time in our history. The shipyards of the north where the Titanic was built, there it is, the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking tonight commemoration. And also, the DeLorean was built here, if you remember the DeLorean.

So don't judge Northern Ireland's workmanship on those two failures. There are literally t-shirts that are selling like hotcakes this year in Belfast and it says "Titanic: it was okay when it left here." They got a point. Okay, and black taxi tours, I love to take a black taxi tour around town to sort of hear the locals, you know, explain their murals.

There's some great guys who do both communities -- we write them up in the book -- so you get an even-handed view of both communities. The Northern Irish flag, which is the cross of St. George. The loyalty of the crown and the five, or the six, points of the northern, six counties of the north, and then this mysterious red hand, which goes back to a story called "The Red Hand of Ulster." Two clans were trying to row to shore, they were fighting each other, first guy to touch the shore gets the land, they're rowing, they're rowing, they're rowing, and as they're just almost ready to touch the shore, they're neck-and-neck, but the guy in the boat that is behind sees that he's not going to make it, he pulls out his sword, chops off his hand, and chucks it onto the shore, and touches the shore first. This is the legend, right, this is mythology, but the idea is, you know, the people of the north are tough hombres, and they're going to get it done no matter what. The Red Hand of Ulster.

You'll see that red hand symbol all over the place in the north, all over the place. And some of the murals are pretty, intended to be intimidating and kind of in-your-face. This is a unionist loyalist community area called the Shankill, using kind of like coming out of the trenches like World War I, and then, in other neighborhoods they give you the soft sell.

This is an IRA guy by the name of Bobby Sands. I mentioned him earlier. He died on hunger strike in '81, but here he's smiling and, you know, hey, "revenge will be the laughter of our children." It's the soft sell versus the hard sell -- two different ways to kind of spin it.

And it is both being spun on either side. But now today Belfast is a booming town and not in the old way of booming, but it's really a growth town now, I'm not talking about bombs. The condos are being built, a new Hilton Hotel, there's a brand-new sports stadium here. They wanted to bring in a sport that would be good for both communities. They couldn't make it hurling, that's too Irish, couldn't make it cricket, that's too British.

So what sport did they bring in? Can you think of any sport that's about brotherly love like hockey? But yet, it works. The communities have no history with hockey, so they both come together and it works. Belfast Giants hockey team.

Okay, one of my favorite pubs in the north is the Crown Liquor Saloon. Mr. Flanagan got married, he was Catholic, she was Protestant, they had an argument, "what should we name our pub?" She said "it's got to be The Crown," and she was loyal to the queen or the king, "it's got to be The Crown," and he lost the argument, he said "okay, we can name it The Crown but only as long as people can wipe their feet on it as they walk in the front door." So you got the friendly guys at The Crown pouring you a pint, so you sit in a snug and kind of contemplate what you've seen in the north. Now we're leaving the north, back in the Republic. One or two more sites here.

Here's Trim Castle right in the town of Trim, this is where the movie "Braveheart" was filmed -- about Scotland but filmed in Ireland. Those guys with the blue faces were all Irish soldiers on leave, as extras. Great little festivals -- look at the Irish tourism website to find out what might be going on when you're in town. Hill of Tara, where the kings of Ireland were crowned way back in the dark ages and way back 2,000 years ago. St. Patrick with the shamrock.

Again, the symbol, one of the symbols of Ireland. High cross here at Monasterboice. The people were given the stories of the Bible, but they were illiterate so they couldn't read the Bible, so the abbots or the priests would carve into these stones the stories of the Bible. So for example, you have here, Eve giving an apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden.

There's a snake going up here. You've got Cain slaying Abel with a mallet to the head. So these are the stories of the Bible.

This cross is 900 years old. And the last and biggest, one of the oldest, most important sites in Ireland is here at Newgrange. This is a burial mound built before the pyramids, almost 5,000 years ago.

When people first were efficient enough to stop hunting and gathering and start building things to last, you know, they'd build things like this to honor their dead. And they were so advanced that they were able to line up this opening right here to the one spot where, on the shortest day of the year, the sunlight would penetrate the inner chamber -- December 22nd. They were that advanced to do that. And they had their cremated remains of their royalty inside, so the sun would carry the spirits of the dead off on that beam of light, and the gods would be pleased, and then from that moment on the days would get longer, and then they could grow their crops, and have a warm summer, and survive. If they didn't please the gods, as far as they knew, it would be darker and darker, and longer and longer, dark and colder. So they were able to do that -- they built this amazing mound right here, the light shines right through that chamber, and they built this over 5,000 years ago.

Really incredible workmanship, right down into the inner chamber, you can enter in there, and it's a very atmospheric place. So in closing, I just want to say that it's the character of the Irish people who keep me coming back. Okay, it's the beer, too.

Do you see the shamrock in the suds on the top there? The bartender will kind of move the cup underneath the dripping tap there. It's the music of Ireland, for sure, that keeps me coming back.

It's the people you meet -- these guys were at the Bushmills Distillery, they were a Finnish biker gang. Nicest guys in the world but they, you know, they look like Hells Angels. They asked me to take their picture and I said "only if I can have my picture taken with you."

I don't know if you can pick me out in the crowd there or not. It's the traditions of Ireland that keep me coming back, like this young lady at a First Holy Communion. It is the humor of the Irish, and it's the mythology of the Irish, like the Leprechaun. You know, it's the optimistic spirit, too, in Ireland because they've had a boom economy and then it went back down and now they're fighting their way back out of it again. So I just want to thank you very much for coming today, thank you so much.

Thank you. Cheers, thank you. Thanks a lot folks, and again, just remember that we've got this 20% sale going on today over in our Travel Center, for those of you watching on Facebook thanks very much, you can use that "festival" promo code until 6 o'clock in the evening tonight. Cheers.