At the Minute in Belfast

Everything is coming together quite nicely in Belfast, where Owen and I have been for the last couple of weeks. We stayed at a backpackers in town for the first couple of nights, and shared a dorm with a group of drunken men on a stag party the last night.

We also spent one night in a motel out in the country since I hadn't realised the exact location when I booked online! It was a bit of a mission to get to and involved a bus ride with many missed stops, an encounter with a rodent of unusual size, and finally a taxi ride when it turned out we had been travelling in the wrong direction for quite some time.

We found somewhere to live fairly quickly, and moved into our new place in South Belfast near the university almost straight away. We're sharing the house with a couple of French guys, both of whom speak good English and are really easy to get along with. I'm hoping I might have an opportunity to learn some more French!

Although we haven't had a lot of time or money for sightseeing, we did manage to take a bus tour of the city. It was very interesting to go through the areas that were really volatile during the Troubles and have a look at the peace wall and some of the political murals:

It's been a bit of a shock to the system starting work on Monday after six weeks of holiday! I'm working for a funding agency doing administration and data entry. The hours are reasonably flexible, the work isn't overly demanding and it is certainly good to be earning money again. And I'm going to need every cent I can get with all the travel plans we have for the next few months!