Belfast by sightseeing bus (Peace Walls, Shankill and Falls Road)

We did take a sightseeing bus in Belfast, and I’m genuinely glad we did. It took us beyond the city centre and into places I know we would never have reached on foot, and it completely changed how the city felt to me. The route also covered a few key landmarks along the way, but it was the neighbourhoods beyond the centre that stayed with me most.

The bus brought us past the Peace Walls, and through both the Shankill Road and the Falls Road. The murals hit you almost immediately. Not in a “street art trail” kind of way, but in a way that feels like Belfast is still speaking out loud.

What struck me most was how visible the divide still is. Not just politically, but culturally too. It’s tied up in identity, community, and faith in a way that is hard to fully understand if you didn’t grow up around it. Seeing it in real streets, with everyday life happening around it, made it feel far more immediate than any documentary ever could.

And then we passed a street where there was a protest.

It wasn’t dramatic in the way films show it, but it was enough to remind me how quickly tension can rise in a place that has lived through decades of conflict. Belfast is modern and full of energy, but it still carries its history close to the surface.

Belfast is a capital city, but it still feels new in a way I wasn’t expecting. Not “new” as in shiny buildings, but new as in it’s still finding its feet. There’s a rawness to it, like the city is still shaping its identity in real time.

The biggest jolt for me was realising that all of this happened in my lifetime.

I think I’d mentally filed it away as “the past”. Seeing it properly, up close, reminded me how easy it is to forget parts of history when you didn’t live through them directly, even when they shaped the world you grew up in.

It was one of the most powerful moments of our Belfast stop, and the part that stayed with me most.