Belfast - Sunday

We got ourselves going a little earlier so we could walk over to Titanic Belfast. This world class museum opened 6 years ago, on the grounds of the shipyard where the Titanic and its sister ship the Olympic were built.

It's a gorgeous building and the different parts of the museum follow along one after the other, so you don't have to worry about missing anything. One of the most interesting parts of the museum is a "Disney like ride" that takes you in a little 6 person "car" up and down a number of floors as if you were going through the inside of the ship's hull as it was being built. Think of the space mountain ride at Disney but not totally dark and no roller coaster like dips and falls. I found the whole exhibition quite fascinating and we took a couple of hours to go through it. There is even a section at the end about the movies and books that have been written about the disaster. And real life video interviews with some survivors. 

The Titanic was built along this strip of ground as seen from the museum building.

Downtown Belfast from up in the museum building. There is a water moat all around the outside walls which makes it quite a dramatic sight to see.

Belfast sites

View from our 8th floor hotel room towards the Belfast Hills. Note wall mural of William of Orange (King Billy). 

We are heading north on the train tomorrow morning to the seaside town of Portrush. If you follow golf, their world famous golf course will be the site of the British open next year. 

What did I think of Belfast? I think it's trying hard to regain what it lost during the Troubles when many folks moved away. Tourism has started back again and they are very grateful for that. The people whom we met were lovely and have such a wonderful sense of fun. Even the guy at the train station when we were inquiring about tickets to Portrush and about the train times. I said  - can we go out and sit to wait for the train. He said you can go out but there are no chairs so there is nowhere to sit. I said ok we'll stand and watch for the train,' except a watched train never arrives. His reply was  "Nope, it's a bus that never arrives!"  Just a lovely sense of humor even for small exchanges!