More photos from the "black" cab tour of Belfast

As Matt described in the previous post, our "black" cab tour with Rodney was a somber one. Rodney took us to murals and shrines that memorialize various bombings and other aspects of The Troubles.

A mural of William of Orange, aka William III of England (a controversial figure, at least here in Northern Ireland):

This is a memorial by the West Belfast Brigade, C Company, Shankill Road: "Dedicated to our fallen comrade Military Commander Stevie 'Top-Gun' McKeag. They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old, age shall not worry them, nor the years condemn, at the going down of the sun, and in the morning we will remember them." According to Wikipedia, he was "...responsible for many brutal killings of Catholics and Republicans. He is also have thought to have shot the most Catholics in the North."

We visited a shrine (and anti-IRA propaganda site; it compares the IRA and Sinn Fein to ISIS) to the 1975 Bayardo Bar attack (the shrine is where the bar used to be on Aberdeen Street):

The Shankill Memorial Gardens "...honour and pay tribute to the men and women of the Shankill who died during the First and Second World Wars and subsequent conflicts... of the 760 who fought only 76 returned."

A section of the gardens is also dedicated to the 1993 Shankill Road bombing (discussed in the previous post):

Here is the plaque that Matt and Rodney were looking at in the previous post. It says, "This lamp has been erected and dedicated to the memory of those innocent victims of the Shankill bombing on Saturday 23rd October 1993 and to all innocent victims of terrorism from the Shankill community. 'To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.' St. Luke, Chapter 1, Verse 79":

We visited a portion of the peace wall. As Wikipedia states, they "...are a series of separation barriers in Northern Ireland that separate predominantly Republican and Nationalist Catholic neighbourhoods from predominantly Loyalist and Unionist Protestant neighbourhoods... [they] range in length from a few hundred yards to over three miles (5 km). They may be made of iron, brick, and/or steel and are up to 25 feet (8 m) high. Some have gates in them (sometimes staffed by police) that allow passage during daylight but are closed at night." The ones that are closed at night are closed at 8 pm.

Here is a shrine to the 1969 burning of Bombay Street:

The upper portion of this photo shows that we are on the other side of the peace wall: