London/derry rocked my world

Derry, looking south from St. Eugene's Cathedral. Republicans call the city Derry, Unionists Londonderry, so outside the city you'll often see London/derry markers to appease everyone. I arrived Thursday afternoon and spent the rest of my time there, leaving Monday afternoon to head back to Belfast.



After finding a great B&B and dropping off my things, I started exploring the city, starting with the nearby Bogside, the famous Catholic neighborhood at the heart of the Troubles and the site of the Bloody sunday massacre in 1972. A couple of the famous murals commemorating the historic events. I think they're repainted each year.


The even-more famous "You are now entering Free Derry" concrete marker. Many of the IRA barricades were erected around this area.


A memorial celebrating the 1981 hunger strikers.


A Bloody Sunday memorial marker. I was rather surprised to discover that I shared the surname of two of the men killed.


Another mural.


I stepped inside the Free Derry Center and discovered these crosses carried every year in the annual Bloody Sunday march.


Graffiti!


An interesting placard on the side of a random building; I need to look up information on who Seamus Doherty is and what happened to him.


The Guildhall, the centerpiece of Guildhall Square and home to most of the St. Patrick's Day celebrations.


The city's cannons, pointing towards the River Foyle, on the best-preserved medieval fortifications in Europe.


Yes, I took this with the camera timer.


A glance from the walls west to the center of the fortifications, The Diamond. The street is much steeper than it appears and left me huffing after ever hike up... or that could have been thanks to the full English breakfast ("the full fry") that I had for five consecutive mornings. Mmm.


The Bogside: you can see Free Derry corner and a couple of the murals. This area is still heavily Catholic; my B&B was a little ways down from the church on the right side of the photo.


A view up the River Foyle.


I don't recall the name of this church (possibly St. Columb's Cathedral) but notice the yellow message board: "Only God can bring Peace."


The western section of the city walls, the Union Jack flies over the city courthouse, probably the only location (aside from The Fountain neighborhood) on the western side of the river where it can be displayed without being immediately attacked and burned.


A street running through The Fountain neighborhood, a tiny enclave home to perhaps 500 Protestants surrounded by tens of thousands of Catholics. There was palpable tension in the air...even before I walked through the area forgetting to take off my Celtic Football Club tri-color scarf (aka, essentially screaming "I am a Republican/Catholic"). I made it through without incident after explaining to the several youths who surrounded me that I was clearly a lost tourist, and an American one at that, and they kindly walked (or escorted?) me back inside the city walls. Note the red, white and blue street curbs - Union Jack colors (but also France and the Netherlands as my Catholic friends loved to joke).


Even the Unionists/Protestants don't like the police: "If pigs could fly, Strand Road police station would be an airport."


I didn't see many murals in The Fountain (probably because I was scared to death), but did notice this one, crowned with a "From pioneers to presidents" banner at the top.



The St. Patrick's Day Parade!


A view of the parade proceeding from the Diamond.


There was a concert going on at Guildhall Square, but I can't say that it was the best music I've ever heard... or even remotely close.


My friend Chris! We ended up talking in Peadar O'Donnell's bar Thursday night, commiserating over Guiness and salt and vinegar crisps about the packed conditions. Here we are on St. Patrick's Day, when he took me on a tour of a few of the better establishments in the city.


St. Patrick's Day was fun. Amazing fun. Here's the aftermath from one bar, The Gweedore, where we would watch the Celtic match on Sunday.


Peadar's! Usually stopped here once a day; a couple times they had great live music. I initially went to it because my oh-so trusty Rough Guide recommended it.


On Saturday, Chris and his wife asked if I wanted to drive with them up to the coast and to a remarkable area called the Bloody Foreland - I readily assented and hopped in their still-weird-and-having-a-hard-time-getting-used-to-right-hand-drive car and off we went. We stopped for a Kodak moment after about 40 minutes, but the sights only got better.


As we were walking around this bridge, two little girls came out and said hello to us. Because we were in the Gaeltacht (any area where Irish is spoken by more than 70 or 80% of the population), Chris spoke to them in Irish and was a bit disappointed when only one of them was able to respond, though I thought it was amazing.


Our first glimpse of the coast.


I can't explain how absolutely beautiful the blue water was... simply stunning.


We parked the car and headed down to one of the coolest beaches I've ever been on.


I was quite surprised at how big these mountains appeared, since I hadn't previously heard much about Irish mountains. We would later drive near one and it was a little more modest in person, but still remarkable.


The sand was like concrete; our shoes barely left footprints!


A charming self-portrait. I think I was going for the contemplative seaman look. Doubtless, I succeeded.


Ruth insisted I walk along the beach barefoot but after feeling the water temperature with my hand and threatening to push her in for the suggestion, she agreed to make reparations by taking my picture. (By now, all my friends in Grenoble and most of those I meet while traveling mock me incessantly with jeers of, "Dude, can you take my picture?" I don't know why they do it. I've only take 4,345 pictures since I arrived in Grenoble.)


A curious little hole. I'd really like to know what kind of creature could make a funny shape like this.


We played with this dog for a while. I think he had rabies, but we kept him at bay by playing catch with random sticks on the beach.


A spectacular naturally occurring phenomenon.


These boulders look small, but they were really enormous and you had to leap from one to another in order to enter or exit the beach.


More beautiful blue.


Can a picture be any more Irish?


Stone pastures.


The previous picture zoomed out a bit; the sunlight illuminating the houses but shading the pastures provides a neat effect.


I'm struggling to come up with synonyms for 'beautiful.'


Shooting road signs is apparently a hobby enjoyed in both rural Indiana and northern Ireland!


The tranquil countryside as we approach Mount Aragal.


Mom told me that pictures are nice, but they're much better if somebody's in them. Neither Ruth nor her friend Tracy liked being in pictures and Chris just laughed at me when I asked if he wanted to be in the pic, so I was the only available candidate.


I shot this from the moving car, but am starting to like it more and more.


An amazing glen.


I know these countryside pictures are a little dull, but I'm trying to illustrate the incredible diversity and profound beauty... in the land of my ancestors. (Actually, every Irishman seemed to be intimately acquainted with my family tree, easily able to describe the region of Scotland where we immigrated from, to the exact section of Ireland they arrived and the likely time they left for America.)


Chris held a dim view of people from Donnegal County, where we did much of our sight-seeing, and kept us laughing constantly with his stories and parodies of Donnegal residents. This, he explained, was a Donnegal limousine.


I don't recall the exact name of this area - salt land? - but it looks like something magical, out of Lord of the Rings.


For such a small country, the sights just stretch on and on.


I climbed up that rock out-crop, but found a better view just to the side.


Saturday night, I ran into a few Irish kids I'd befriended the night before (we all ended up sleeping at one of their estate homes Friday night and taking a taxi back to town) and we hung out again.


Strand Road police station looks like a fortress and is correspondingly guarded like one. I asked Chris why there were so few CCTV cameras in Derry compared to Belfast, where they seemed to proliferate on every street corner. "We just tear 'em down," he explained.


Chris and I in the Gweedore on Sunday, the day of the Celtic match. I don't recall their opponent, but most of their players were "stupid beasts" and "Quasimodos," so it was little surprise that the Celtics won 3-0.


Chris introduced me to several of his friends and fellow Celtic supporters - here's Donnal and "Coco," his son. Donnal and I talked politics for a while and he invited me to come back over the summer to spend a weekend camping and barbecuing with his family out in the countryside. He asked me my last name - and then asked, "Are you serious?" He called over his friends and family (his wife Margaret, older son and daughter were also all in the Gwee watching the game) and told me to repeat my last name. I did, and he was astounded, saying that was mother's maiden name. From then on he called me his cousin and insisted I come back to Ireland in August for an Irish wedding.


An IRA-loving band in an IRA-loving bar playing IRA-loving fight songs and other classics, like "We all live in a Catholic housing scheme" set to the tune of "Yellow Submarine." Whenever we discussed the IRA, Chris simply called it the "RA."


After the match, I went back to Peadar's since Chris had to go home to Ruth. After about four minutes of sitting at the bar, I got to talking to Danny, a 30-year-old taxi driver, and his two friends, Ralph and Sean. They all took a liking to me and we did a tour of their favorite bars and pubs, including the Castle Bar and The Rocking Chair, where I somehow ended up celebrating an Irish girl's 18th birthday party with her and her friends.

After they left, I stayed until 2am talking with a couple older Irish guys, including one who had worked in Brooklyn for twenty years. We drank Guinness and talked politics and they expressed the same views that I'd heard every other Catholic say over the course of my stay: they were so happy at the state of affairs and glad the peace process was still in effect, spat at the mention of Ian Paisley and expected to see a united Ireland in ten to fifteen years, "because too many good men have died for us not to have a country."

I was all out of pounds sterling at the end of the night and planned to walk home, but was admonished to take a taxi because the area was a bit dodgy. At first I refused to accept his money, but he threatened to kick my (you sit on it) if I didn't, so I smiled and thanked him, and he gave me his address and said if I ever wanted to come back to Derry and stay with him and his family, I was more than welcome.

Things I didn't take a picture of: the Hamas and Hezbollah headbands displayed behind the bar inside Peadar O'Donnell's, the Bush 9/11 Deception Dollar or the Boycott Israeli Goods sign. The Northern Irish feel an incredible kinship with any oppressed or occupied people, as well as charismatic revolutionaries like Che Guevara, and display their affection adamantly and openly.

This video quality is crap, but the sound should be OK - a view from inside the Gwee: