The First Excursion to Belfast

My traveling buddies, Erin on the left and Louise on the right.

The two cranes that built the Titanic (bet you didn't know it was built in Northern Ireland), Samson and Goliath.

One of the many artistic monuments in Belfast.

The clocktower.

Looking out at the city from the globe on top of Victoria Square.

I found a new friend, the big fish.

The globe (where we looked out at the city) all lit up at night. It changed colors too!

A picturesque moment on our way back to the train to go home.

This past weekend, we decided to visit Belfast. All that we had seen of the city was the train station as we made our way to the university, and so a jaunt around the capital sounded good. And so Erin, Louise, and I rolled out of bed early again on Saturday to catch the 10:15 train to Belfast.

The ride was not quite as exciting as the one to Londonderry. No ocean view this time, but it was still a nice ride. We got off at the very last stop, Victoria Street, which is right smack dab in the middle of the city. Since it was around noon when we arrived, we decided lunch would be first on the agenda.

We found Victoria Square pretty quickly, which is probably the nicest indoor/outdoor mall I have ever been in. There is a big glass dome at the top and you can see the whole city from it. After rejecting many restaurants for being too expensive, we settled on a little Italian joint that had a good lunch deal. Of course, halfway through the meal we realized that the deal was only on Monday to Friday, so we ended up spending more anyway. Oh well, we tried.

From lunch, we headed out into the city to explore. We decided to just take things easy since we would certainly be returning to Belfast soon (I didn't realize at the time, but that would be this weekend). Without a schedule or specific destinations in mind, we did what any college girls would do and found all the most exciting parts of the city, like the big fish and the musical grating thing and the whirlwind machine that you could spin. We took our obligatory photos of the architecture and the pay-toilets. We found a nice cathedral and admired the stained glass. Erin discovered a little store that sold used everything, and she bought me a little blue box keychain (it's from Doctor Who, for those who don't know). Then we headed back to the mall to walk around shops.

I guess we picked the mall with all the expensive shops, but it was fun to look at all the nice dresses and wish that we actually had money to buy them. I was on a mission to find a poster for my, as of yet, bare room. Louise took us to the movie theatre and we asked if they had any UK movie poster that we "American tourists" could take home with us. The lady was really nice and brought us a few, though none were incredible. I now have the poster from Australia hanging on my wall, even though I haven't seen that movie. The poster is pretty.

We ended off the day with Starbucks, where we sat at a checkers table and so, of course, had to find a way to play checkers. Just for your future reference, three-person checkers doesn't work. But we had fun trying.

We probably didn't even see half the city, but we had a really good time in Belfast. I took lots of photos, even though my camera insisted on dying half way through the day. And I'll be going back this weekend so hopefully we'll hit some different parts than we did last weekend.