St. Patrick's Day in Belfast


My upcoming exam has again motivated me to write another blog post. I've reached the point where I want to do anything but study. Anything. Literally anything. 
I apologise in advance for the rushed and less than spectacular post. I'm going to try my best to publish posts about everywhere that I have visited up until this point before I leave for my six-week long backpacking trip in July with my friends from home. Once I'm off, I probably won't be able to update my blog at all and when I return, I'll have a whole new list of destinations to write about...


I was super excited to be celebrating St Patrick's Day in Ireland! It's definitely something bucket list worthy. We first tried booking a trip to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day but everything was was so expensive so we figured that Belfast in Northern Ireland was our next best option. It ended up working out well for me because I'd already been to Dublin, giving me the chance to visit another city and country. We arrived in Belfast quite late at night so didn't get the chance to do much besides grab dinner at a small cafe near our hostel.


Our hostel's lounge room and reception
Irish beef stew
I still have dreams about this burger...
St Patrick's Day started off with a bang. The overall vibe that morning was great, with the hostel being filled with excited and energetic people ready to celebrate the holiday.  Us girls donned our matching green skirts and painted each other's faces with clovers before joining the others in the kitchen of our hostel for pres. We managed to befriend a group of Brazilians there who we hung out with for the morning. 

Our plans for Belfast consisted of nothing except celebrating St Patrick's Day. We didn't have any touristy things planned for the trip at all because we were only going to be there for a day. Although we didn't have any sightseeing plans for our Belfast stay, our walk into the city centre to join the St. Patrick's Day festivities gave us a chance to see a few of the city's attractions.


Belfast City Hall
Belfast City Hall
Belfast City Hall

There was a St. Patrick's Day parade going on throughout the city starting at noon but when we headed out to the city centre to see it, we discovered that we had missed it as we had gotten too carried away that morning in the kitchen and had left our hostel too late.

Because we had missed the parade, we headed straight to the St Patrick's Day concert where the festivities continued. We got to see some traditional Irish dancing and they also performed to some recent songs like Timber by Pitbull and Kesha which was interesting to say the least.



Heading into the St. Patrick's Day concert
St. Patrick's Day concert
Squad
By the time the concert ended, we were all starving and so went on a quest to find a pub that was recommended to us by our hostel's receptionist. It was a little tough to find but definitely ended up being worth it. The buffet-style meal was amazing and definitely what we needed after the action packed morning that we had. The guy serving us, James, was awesome and he even gave us two extra plates to top up with food!




Albert Memorial Clock

We managed to fit one sightseeing thing in during our time in Belfast. After lunch, we went to see the Peace Wall because one of our troop had studied it in his history class. I didn't know anything about the wall coming into the trip and ended up learning a little bit about the history of the city that day and about the conflict that still exists.

Peace Wall mural


Peace Wall
Peace Wall
Our night was, again, spent celebrating St. Patrick's Day but this time with a huge group of people from our hostel. I never thought that I would ever get to celebrate St Patrick's Day in Ireland so my time in Belfast was special and something that I'll always remember. I'm not sure that I will return to Belfast but I'll always have fond memories of my time there.

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