Around Belfast - Sunday

Sunday started a bit slowly for us we were late getting up. The weather looked OK but wasn’t forecast to be real good so we weren't in any rush to get out and, when we did, we packed our waterproof gear. 

We did get going in time to catch the hop on hop off bus about 11:00 and started our tour around Belfast. One of the early stops is the Titanic Belfast museum and we thought we would do that early rather than later in the day, so we hopped off the bus at that stop and headed in.

The museum was really interesting and covered everything from the history of Belfast as a shipbuilding city (once one of the biggest in ghe world) through the construction of the Titanic by Harland & Wolff, its fit out, its sea trials and the obviously disastrous maiden voyage to New York. Very well done, very interesting and very poignant to see the massive effort that went into building the unsinkable ship and the horrendous loss of life that occured.

It’s also interesting to note that the subsequent inquiry identified some fairly simple things that could have led to a very different outcome.

It was bucketing down as we went to leave the Titanic museum, so we stopped and had a bite to lunch instead - quite nice fish and chicken tacos for a change. 

Unfortunately the hop on hop off bus in Belfast only runs every half an hour so we had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for one to arrive and then it was full so that we had to wait 30 minutes for another one. By the time we’d stood out in the cold and damp for 45 minutes we were a bit peeved. We then realised the last bus left at 4:30 and by this time it was about 3:30, so we stayed on the bus and did the rest of the tour rather than hopping off to experience any the other destinations. 

The tour explained a lot of the background to the Troubles and we passed quite a few of the key sites that showed how difficult it would have been for society to operate with the risks of bombings and battles and the so called Peace Wall, which basically split Belfast into. The wall actually had gates which were shut at 7:00 at night and where everybody who went through the gate had to be searched. It has since become an opportunity to support peace in NI by signing it - like a few US presidents and other notables.

In the end despite being pretty annoyed at having to stand around so long waiting for bus to arrive,  the tour was quite interesting and very informative.

By the time we hopped off the bus it was about 5:00 so we headed back to the room for a cup of tea. We then went down for a drink before we went to dinner at Fratellis, which is a well known Italian restaurant here. We had a very nice meal and dragged ourselves home for nearly night.