Belfast, Northern Ireland - July 11, 2016

H & W Cranes (Harland & Wolf) cranes above the shipyard where the Titanic was built:

Titanic dry dock:

Titanic dry dock:

HMS Caroline, permanent exhibit next to the Titanic dry dock. The Caroline is the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland:

Titanic Museum in Belfast. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go inside:





The SS Nomadic at the Titanic museum. This ship was originally built as a tender for White Star Line ships Olympic and Titanic. This tender was used by Benjamin Guggenheim and others to board the Titanic:

St. Anne's Cathedral: 

Murals are all over the place in Belfast:

Belfast street scenes:

Shankill area in Belfast, where Protestant pro-British families live. Political intensity is extremely high. Killers and the killed are remembered in murals:

Mural of Stephen "Top Gun" McKeag, commander of the Ulster Defense Association. The red circles around his picture represent the (Catholic) people he killed. He ultimately died of a drug overdose:

We were visiting on July 11th, also known as "Eleventh Night," when the protestant loyalists burn enormous bonfires celebrating English battles with Catholic Jacobites in the 17th century. We saw several of these stacks of tires and wooden pallets. The bonfires are considered illegal and provocative but the local police can't do much about them:

Cupar Way "Peace Wall" (on left), built to separate Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods:

Signing the Peace Wall:

International Wall mural on Divis Street:

Belfast was unlike any place we have visited. You can sense the hatred between residents. Unfortunately, the U.S. appears to be going down the same road...