Looking for a vacation on the edge? Countries with a history of strife can provide a sense of drama for the thrill seeker. But precisely because troubled nations Scare off most tourists, they can also offer–of all things-peace and quiet. The best time to visit the Middle East is always after a terrorist incident: prices drop and the shrines are empty. Northern Ireland tourist officials scoff at the idea that their country is a mecca for voyeurs of violence. Instead they sell the province as an unspoiled getaway. Salmon fishing on pristine lakes, golf on world-class courses, a week in a country cottage all the more beautiful because it’s undiscovered–are all available at bargain rates. The message seems to be getting through: tourism was up 6 percent overall last year and 19 percent among North Americans. “Our sort of destination is in fashion,” argues tourist-board chairman Sir Hugh O’Neill. “We’re remote, clean, unspoiled.”
And, it must be said, bomb-riddled from time to time. Last week 100,000 partisans celebrated William of Orange’s 303-year-old triumph in the Battle of the Boyne over Britain’s last Roman Catholic king, James II. Protestant rioters hurled petrol bombs and set overturned cars alight until police dispersed them with plastic bullets. But notoriety’s not all bad. “You could say we’ve had half our job done for us,” notes O’Neill. “At least everyone knows where Northern Ireland is.” To allay fears of terrorism, boosters publish handy crime data showing that Northern Ireland’s general crime rate is four times lower than Sweden’s and its murder rate 15 times lower than Washington, D.C.’s.
Careless souls could die of boredom, though. Warning: do not take the Belfast city-bus tour-a mind-numbing 3-hour-and-47-minute holiday experience from hell. It snakes you past sites like the Supermac (“forerunner to all the supermarkets we see here in Belfast today,” says the conductor) but bypasses the historically troubled Falls Road and Shankhill Road altogether. Ask people here to name Belfast’s top three tourist attractions and you get a lot of blank stares. “Probably city hall,” says R. M. Williamson, manager of the Europa Hotel in central Belfast, bombed more than 30 times by the IRA in the past 24 years. “I would have said the Grand Opera House, which was right next door here until recently.” Last May the IRA detonated an explosion that injured 20, shut down the opera house for what looks like a year and left the nearby Europa with only 40 percent of its rooms inhabitable three months later.
But most visitors can easily steer clear of the violence if they want to. Marjorie Kusick, 70, and Ellen Sangas, 69, two tourists from Boston, arrived on their first-ever visit to Northern Ireland last month. Walking out of a downtown Belfast parking garage, they heard a loud kaboom. Kusick jumped. Sangas shivered. But it was only the echo-enhanced sound of a garage door slamming, not a sectarian bomb exploding. The moment ranked as the closest encounter the women would have with the IRA’s long and bloody campaign to wrest the province from British rule. The Bostonians’ verdict on a Northern Ireland holiday? Glorious green hills, stunning coastline, low prices and one small problem: “The people aren’t too good at waving at tourists yet,” says Kusick. “But then, they’re new at this.”
