To ask if you would visit Northern Ireland?

[BlueFlamingoes]

Would you visit NI? Why/why not? I always find it interesting how marmite of a place my home is - keen to hear some opinions and maybe dispel a rumour or two :)

You grasp that Catholics are a far higher proportion of the population of NI than in England, right?

I don’t follow your logic @TombsofAtuan.

I was planning to visit this week. But all affordable hotels were taken in Belfast, so have to go another time. So I'd say quite a few people visit 🙂

Neither do I.

What on earth are you talking about @TombsofAtuan? You wouldn’t come to NI because you are catholic? I can assure you that you’d be perfectly safe. As are the hundreds of thousands of catholics who
live here. Or have I misunderstood something?

Bushmills wouldn’t be very welcoming to Catholics, it’s the town beside the Giants Causeway. Obviously there’s so much tourism there that most catholics should be fine, but still - it definitely wouldn’t be a comfortable place for a catholic to live.

Living in an area and visiting it are totally different things.

Yep, I was just about to say this.

Bushmills is very prod although I do know some catholics who live comfortably there. However to say you wouldn’t visit northern Ireland as a catholic is just silly.

I’d really like to visit, my Mum was from NI and told me so many stories about places she visited. But I’ve built up an irrational fear of going. When I was a child my Mum often went to visit my Grandma and her family. It seemed like every time she went a bomb went off or someone was shot. So I became terrified of her going as I thought something was going to happen to her, I used to have recurring nightmares about it.

Now in my 50’s I have an Auntie there I haven’t met and have recently done a family tree so lots of distant cousins too. So I really want to go, but I just can’t shake the feeling something bad will happen. I kinda feel ok about Belfast but when I think of going to the town she’s from and travelling around the country, I get so anxious.

I know I need to get over it, maybe this thread will help me, reading about all the lovely places to visit. I just need to go, I know it will be fine.

I live somewhere wet. I don't like the idea of going anywhere as likely to be wet, so I go south for all holidays. Otherwise it sounds absolutely lovely, and I probably will go sometime.

You get that the Troubles ended with the GFA, right?

Love Donegal 💚

Yes, that’s why I said an irrational fear.

That’s not in Northern Ireland though. It is a beautiful area.