We enjoyed the breakfast buffet in the Belfast Hilton’s restaurant this morning about 9 a.m. and afterwards took off to see the city. We walked about three blocks to the nearest bus stop for the hop-on, hop-off city tour buses. Gary had bought our tickets online the night before. Within 10 minutes, a double decker bus stopped to pick us up. Our first stop was Queen’s University Belfast campus and the botanic garden there. We walked through the garden in the sunshine and looked around inside their Victorian style conservatory, The Palm House.
We got on the next bus that came by and took it to the International Wall, which is a series of very colorful political murals that features Republican (pro independent Ireland) heroes. In another part nearby was a pro Unionist (royalist, for remaining part of the U.K.) area, with murals of Queen Elizabeth and King Charles and Union Jack flags on the buildings. We also saw some of the walls remaining from the Troubles, separating nationalist and unionist areas.
We then took the bus to Belfast City Hall, where there are free exhibits inside telling some of the history of the city. After touring those, we walked around a nearby downtown shopping area to find a place for lunch. We found City Picnic, featuring a variety of non-Mexican-flavored tacos, flatbreads, burgers, milkshakes and margaritas. It was a wide and strange variety of food, but it worked well for us. Along with our meals, we all got milkshakes.
Then we hopped on the bus again and took it to the Titanic Museum quarter of the city, near the riverfront. We had purchased tickets for a 3:30 entrance to the museum, but we were too early for that, so we walked around outside. It was a pleasant afternoon weather-wise, with partly sunny skies and a temperature in the high 60s.
About 15 minutes before our admittance time, we went inside and waited in line. We were allowed in a little early and began our 2-hour visit to this excellent museum. I didn’t take pictures of the exhibits, but this modern museum used multi-media (videos, audio, artifacts, music and lights) very effectively to tell the stories of life in old time Belfast, the history of shipbuilding there, how the Titanic was designed and built, and of course, the story of the disaster itself. It also told the personal stories of many of the people involved, displayed photos and exhibits of the inside of the ship, and described what was learned from the failings of the accident and measures taken to insure safer ships and navigation in the future. It also told the story of how Robert Ballard found the ship’s wreckage and displayed quite a few artifacts from survivors and the ones who perished. Finally, there was a wall onto which all the names of the survivors were projected, as well as the names of all those who died. All of it was very well done and we learned a lot from touring it.
Upon exiting the museum about 5:30, we walked along the River Lagan waterfront for 25 minutes to return to our hotel. There we relaxed in the executive lounge for a while before walking to The Kitchen Bar, a pub serving food that was 10 minutes from the hotel. I enjoyed some Irish stew and the others tried some other Irish pub dishes, with Matt adding a pint of Guinness to his dinner.
Lori's Travels 