We are staying for two nights in our tenement in Bogside so we had the full day available to be exploring the city. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate today. It was very windy with horizontal rain when we awoke with no chance of it subsiding until perhaps the early afternoon. Our apartment (nicely renovated by the way) had a new washer and dryer so we went to plan B and spent the morning doing laundry and are now good for the rest of our trip.
At around 2pm, the weather radar forecast had a glimmer of hope for a chance for a walkabout in the walled city so we put on our rain jackets and headed out. As I mentioned in the previous blog post, we are right at the site of the Bloody Sunday massacre in a Catholic enclave called Bogside because it was built on reclaimed land just outside of the ancient (1600's) city walls. Lots of wall art on the row housing depicting times from "the Troubles".
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| The Bloody Sunday Monument across the street from our apartment |
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| Our place.. the top two floors of the end unit |
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| A lot of support for Palestine in the Irish Republic |
It was only a couple of blocks to walk to the Butcher's Gate at the wall and a set of stairs that got us to the top of the fortifications around the old city of Derry. It was about a 1 mile (UK is still miles for distance) walk around the wall. A bunch of nice views of the city from here but the weather started to deteriorate as we completed our lap.
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| View from on the wall |
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| City Hall |
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| The Derry Girls mural |
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| Pigeons on a Ledge |
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| Panorama of the Boglands |
There was a big motorcycle rally being held in the public space by the Outlaws MC Club Ireland Chapter. A bunch or rough looking blokes!
We were getting pretty wet so we gave up on our foot tour and started to head home through the old city. it was raining hard enough we decided to take refuge in an Irish Pub in the hopes that the rain would let up. A fun place to spend an hour while the rain let up.
We returned to the tenement and chilled out until supper time and luckily the rain had ended. Last night we tried to get into an Italian restaurant just down the street but were rejected because they said they had a bunch of reservations arriving soon. They suggested, come earlier next time so we did. Same story tonight. The place was half empty so I'm guessing we didn't meet their criteria for entry (Foreigners, not Catholic??). No problem, no money for you! A couple of blocks away was one of the top rated Bistro's in town and we had a fabulous dinner and left them lots of British Pounds.
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