From our first venture out walking along the river Lagan -- an inocuous enough neighborhood, though around the corner was our first encounter with what is inexorably woven into the fabric of the city of Belfast -- a building sized mural in support of the Loyalist paramilitaries, complete with weapons and men in black hoods (balaclavas).

Also from that first walk -- a couple of interesting tree views from the Ormeau Park, adjacent to the river Lagan, on the so-called Protestant side. There was a bicycle race going on the afternoon we were there, parents cheering on their children cycling through the mud amidst the benign sauntering walkers.

Interior (vaulted ceiling) of St. Malachy's church, Belfast -- a seemingly vibrant Catholic community near what is referred to as the city centre.

Plaque locating An Droichead (The Bridge), an Irish-language community notably situated in the 'general population' area of Belfast. An Droichead offers, among other things, residences for those desiring to live in a developing (though obviously still 'marginalized') Gaeltacht, Irish language-based schooling for children, arts and language classes for adults, and an extraordinary venue for traditional Irish music which (as we found out to our disappointment) generally sells out well before scheduled performances.

http://www.androichead.com/

From the Towpath along the River Lagan -- now a pedestrian walkway and bike path, it used to function as the venue for horse-drawn barges to haul goods to Belfast city from the port opening further down the river.  As you can see, this is not typical Irish weather -- we were extremely fortunate to be there amidst three weeks of near-continuous sunshine (a few exceptions will be evident in what follows).

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Below is another interesting tree view, this one from along the Towpath. It was March so most everything was still quite bare.

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From the Famine commemorative window in Belfast City Hall.

Next to the City Hall (the buliding lit up to the right) is something called the Belfast Wheel -- an enormous ferris wheel-like structure, probably modelled on the London Eye, installed in 2007 to presumably aid in restoring a public-friendly feel to the city centre. It was originally intended to be in place for only six months but became popular enough to continue. Sunday April 11 (coincidentally the day I write this) will be its last day of operation. 

 http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/Final-spin-for-Big-Wheel.6216561.jp

Below is a sense of the view from the inside.

St. Anne's parish otherwise known as the Belfast Cathedral, adjacent to the so-called 'Cathedral Quarter.'  This is the 'official' church of the city and generally plays host to any visiting dignitaries.  For our two Sundays in Belfast we decided to attend services in each of the two primary traditions and began with the Anglican St. Anne's because it was around the corner from where we were staying. The early service was a small gathering of obviously dedicated older parishoners.

The most memorable point (at least for me) was their collective prayer for the Queen as head of the church.

More of the Belfast Cathedral.

St. Patrick's, the Catholic parish a few blocks from the Anglican Cathedral, which we discovered on an exploratory walk after that first Sunday service.  The church was conspicuous for, among other things, having no outside posting of times when mass is celebrated.

The following Sunday we attended -- not St. Patrick's as we had anticipated -- but a parish in the Catholic enclave known as the Falls Road. More on this later.

Further along that exploratory walk we found ourselves in the Crumlin Road (adjacent to the Shankill, the fierce and most notorious Loyalist neighborhood). One of the most memorable sights was an abandoned church that nature was in full process of reclaiming. Gazing at the church sparked a meaningful exchange with two young men,  tattooed to clearly mark them as Republicans, who were mystified both by our interest in the church and by our having actually come from the US for the sole purpose of spending time in the city of Belfast.

More details from the abandoned church (whose denomination I have not been able to uncover). The adjacent church hall building had been salvaged and houses an Indian cultural organization.

A stone statue on the front grounds of the church.

Loyalist mural in an adjacent neighborhood between the Crumlin Road and the Shankill. The neighborhood was incredibly quiet and the mural seemed a strange counterpoint to the seeming calm of the valley and the natural beauty of the hills beyond.

Further up the road we stumbled upon Her Majesty's Prison Belfast, also known as the Crumlin Road Gaol (jail), a somewhat notorious site known for its holding of "suspected terrorist and paramilitary prisoners" (including, among others, Eamon deValera the first president of the Irish Free State). The prison was officially closed in March of 1996 but was recently opened to tours (though not when we visited). Across the street is the equally decommissioned courthouse, linked to the gaol by an underground tunnel for transporting prisoners.

http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article.aspx?art_id=147

It was not unusual to see barbed wire around the tops of walls (as well as warnings of 'anti-climbing paint'). This was from the back of a library off the Crumlin Road.

Gate on the Crumlin Road.

Walking back toward the city centre, one of the many interesting housefronts -- this one for its spiral motifs (unfortunately not very visible) at the base of the upper windows.

Roads, even in the city, are extraordinarily narrow and parking is often on the sidewalk. One area of continual interest to me was the way in which the prevailing language -- though supposedly the same as ours -- was used in such different configurations.
For example, main thoroughfares were peppered with signs saying "Urban Clearway" which eventually I understood was the equivalent of our
"No Parking."

From a back alley near Queen's University.

Churchfront, also near Queen's.

Gate to the city centre 
from Writer's Square
where quotations from Irish writers are engraved in the stone of the walking surface, some in the Irish language.

Our next excursion was an extended walk up and into the Falls Road, the Catholic section of the city of Belfast.  At the 'gates' of the Falls is St. Peter's, a magnificent church whose twin spires can be seen from some distance (we could see them from the window of the apartment where we were staying in the City Centre). The views that follow are all from St. Peter's.

Interior windows, below from the altar of the Virgin.

Failte go dti Bothar na bhFal.

Welcome to the Falls Road

http://www.visitwestbelfast.com/

The Catholic Falls and the Loyalist Shankill neighborhoods are the sites of most of the city's murals and the iconographies are identifiably different.  Loyalist murals tend to be recognizably militaristic, including weapons, men in black hoods, and emblems of power such as badges or shields. Murals we saw on the Falls tended to represent symbols of oppression and/or liberation including this one of Frederick Douglass who is also quoted:

"Perhaps no class has carried prejudice against color to a point more dangerous than have the Irish and yet no people have been more relentlessly oppressed on account of race and religion."

Murals and so-called "Gardens of Remembrance" in the Falls also commemorate those who were killed or otherwise died as a result of the violence -- this mural "Saoirse" or "Freedom" is a memorial to the ten men who "sacrificed their lives" in 1981 as a result of their hungerstrike embodying 'non-compliance' with their incarceration by the British government. The poem by Bobby Sands (the first to die as a result of the hungerstrike) reads:

All things must come to pass as one
So hope should never die
There is no height or bloody might
That a freeman can't defy.
There is no source or foreign force
Can break one man who knows
That his free will no thing can kill
And from that freedom grows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Irish_hunger_strike