Our accommodation is very pleasant, not too expensive but certainly represents better value than some of the other B&B's we have stayed in. Specious room, good breakfast, and helpful staff. We are in the annex, of a converted Victorian house in a street of all Victorian houses, many of which have been converted as student apartments, as the whole area is close to the University.
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Bit dark and stormy note all the "to let" signs
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We chose to do the Hop on Hop Off bus tour, and were picked up and taken into the city centre. The tour took us all over Belfast, and lasted about 1.5 hours. Along the way we passed the Parliamentary building, it is a beautiful building built in 1932, and the 6 pillars at the front denote the 6 states.
They have 116 politicians for 1.5 million people, overgoverned? Perhaps.
I wasn't able to get many photos due to the rain but did manage a few of the local sites.
Last time we were in Belfast there was so much evidence of "The troubles" in Shankhill Road area, shops were boarded up with tin, others had been burnt, and the police were patrolling in armoured vehicles.
Today there is none of that, in fact apart from the police vehicle that I photographed yesterday we saw none.
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Tactical response unit
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Many of the murals have been painted over, and there is only a small part of the original dividing walls remaining. It used to even have orange paint down the centre of the road to distinguish which side you should be on, but today it is a "normal" community.
Last time we drove up and down the road 3 times, until I think the police thought we were undesirables, this time we drove there feeling quite safe, even though some radicals were protesting a few weeks ago.
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| A bad battle |
Back towards town there was one striking mural about King William III, Billys Wall!
Last night we were walking along the road near here to find somewhere to eat, and we thought the menu at this pub was okay. Turns out it is the most popular pub in Belfast, I even had asked the bouncer if this was suitable for us oldies, and to tell us truthfully, needless to say, we ate somewhere else!
Back into town and it was pelting. We walked for a bit for a couple of photos, and then decided to go back to the Titanic Exhibition as pants and shoes were getting rather wet. But some of the buildings are really beautiful, and so large that they don't fit into photographs.
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| The Town Hall is it huge |
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| Looks like a casino |
The Titanic Exhibition was in my opinion one of the best tourist attractions that we had ever been in. Even John who is very non-committal most of the time, agreed. To develop the idea, and then see it through to its conception was amazing. Queen Elizabeth opened it in 2012, and it cost 97 million pounds. A lot of money.
To think that crazy Clive Palmer is building Titanic 2, defies my imagination, he obviously didn't visit here before he came up with that idea.
The whole thing is interpretive, with holograms, and a small roller coaster ride that allows you to experience the size of the building process, to the theatre showing the discovery of the wreck. No video allowed, but cameras were okay.
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| You guess.............ship or iceberg! |
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| Bit dark but this is the lady on the front of the ship |
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| Dockside where the ship was constructed |
The first floor was all about life in Belfast 100 years ago. The displays keep changing, and you feel like you are walking the streets just like the black images that keep moving across the scene.
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The size of the dry dock required to be built just to hold the ship during construction.
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Then we went on a ride through the different stages of construction, I managed to get photos of the rivets being driven into the iron.
The Titanic was on of the Olympic ships, nothing had ever been built of that size before, as the manager of the shipyard informed us on his panel.
Looks almost real, but so well done. The next area we were in was the outfitting of the ship. Then into the First Class cabin. It cost more than 860 pounds to travel on the ship in First Class, many millionaires were onboard. Third class cost more than 6 pounds, and you got bargain basement for that.
And then it hit an iceberg, and the next room gave us that experience.
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Not good photo, but just imagine what we were seeing.
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Belfast today, in the shipyards, is vastly different to those times. There is an oil rig towed from Brazil for repairs in the harbour.
I read a sign that stated that Belfast has the best optic fibre wireless network and I believe it, because for the very first time in our 7 weeks here, when I connected to the Titanic WiFi, my weather (from home) and my news headlines popped up! Good to see that the Wallabies thrashed France as well.
We even managed to get a London Black Cab back to our home. We missed out on doing that in London but made up for it here.
We are hoping for an improvement to the weather for Sunday!
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