21st June 2016 - Belfast.

Firstly apologies for the lack of blog posts since Sunday, I’ve had a glitch in my blogging software and so have gone back to first principles using a text editor to compose the posts. I’m not sure exactly how this will look but I’ll do my best to make it readable as we go on our journey.

Today we visited the capital city of Northern Ireland, Belfast. Sylvia and I have visited Ireland on many occasions but only once have we ventured into the North, while holidaying in Ballybunion and have never before visited Belfast. The city has been gearing itself up for tourists since the end of the troubles but as yet have not built a cruise terminal. We docked in the middle of an industrial area with coal being unloaded from ships all around us. 

We had booked on a tour that was to take us to see the highlights of Belfast and then to the Titanic Experience a multi-million pound interactive exhibition covering the building, launching and subsequent sinking of the famous liner. The tour guide, a local man, showed the normal Irish wit by announcing the tour in Gaelic before saying “You did book on the Irish speaking tour didn’t you?”. 

After a short history of the origins of the city, which is comparatively new, dating only from the early 17th century after a castle was built by Baron Chichester, we toured the city. Here we saw many magnificent buildings including the City Hall and Queen’s University.

Many of the buildings were built on money from the linen trade which flourished in the city after the arrival of the Huguenots from France in the late 17th century. This being replaced by heavier industries such as ship building in the 19th century. Of course no history of Belfast would be complete without mentioning the Troubles between the Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods in the 1960s and beyond. Although substantially over memories linger long as can be seen from the murals on the Falls Road…

…. and also the Shankill Road.

You could tell which denomination each neighbourhood belonged to by the flags flying from the houses with the Irish tricolour being replaced by either the Union flag or the Ulster flag as you passed along the roads.

Across the River Langan on the old Harland-Wolff shipyards lies the Titanic Belfast experience housed in a spectacular building shaped like the hulls of the famous ships that were built here. 

The museum which was opened in 2012 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the tragic liner is spread over four floors and gives a taste of what it was like to work in the shipyards. In addition various exhibits outline the building, fitting out and subsequent maiden voyage of the ship. Outside the original slipways, on which the Titanic and her sister ships were launched, are still in place with our cruise ship across the river.

There is also a monument naming all the people who tragically lost their lives on the ship, there were three Robbins, two in Third Class and one in First but only one Walker (In First Class - Obviously).

The museum was very good but was very crowded as in addition to our cruise ship there were several coach tours and also a number of school trips, perhaps an indication of it’s success. After visiting the museum we returned to board our own cruise ship hopefully our trip will end more successfully than theirs.

Tomorrow Stornaway in the Hebrides.