Day 134: Exploring Belfast

Time to check out the city! We had a full day available, and planned to use it! After breakfast, our first stop was to hop in the car and drive around the peace walls district. This area is where most of the trouble is/was, as it's a border area between Unionists and Loyalists and many clashes have taken place in this area.

The large walls erected (larger than the Berlin Wall, incidentally) are mostly still standing, though big sections of them are covered in peaceful slogans. Visitors are encouraged to bring a marker and add their own message of peace, though we didn't do that. Still a lot of sharply pro-Union and pro-UK murals though! And we drove around the two opposing neighbourhoods with all their flags and bunting. It all seemed a bit provocative, and even though a peace agreement was signed in 1998, things still feel a bit tense.

It started to rain so we drove into the centre of town to one of the best museums in the UK - the Titanic Belfast museum. This huge new museum is dedicated to the Titanic and although it was pricey, it was actually really well done. It started with the context of the time period, the background of Belfast in the late 19th century converting from agriculture and linen production to shipbuilding, the reasons for building huge liners like Titanic and her sisters Olympic and Britannic, the maiden voyage, the sinking, the aftermath, and then sections on the wreck's discovery too.

The whole thing was huge and took several hours to go around, and was really well done. Not stuffy and boring like museums can sometimes be, but very well-presented and thoughtful. Good recreations of things like the shipyards, cabins on board, the lifeboats and so on. The museum is built on the site where Titanic was constructed, and the slipway is actually still there. Good view from the point where she was slid down into the sea, and you could see into the adjacent Titanic Studios, where all of the indoor scenes for Game of Thrones are filmed!

We grabbed some lunch here as well, but it was mid-afternoon by the time we'd finished. Briefly headed across the road to look at the SS Majestic, a small tender that was the only White Star Line ship still afloat. Its claim to fame is that it was one of the tenders used to ferry passengers and cargo from Cherbourg port to Titanic before she departed (I'd forgotten Titanic called at Cherbourg and Queenstown in Ireland before heading off into the Atlantic).

From here we drove down into the middle of the city, parked up and went exploring. The Victorian-era City Hall was very impressive, and beautiful on the inside. A couple had just gotten married in the registry office and were a little bemused by all the Chinese tourists taking their photograph! Also wandered around outside checking out the street art - one area in particular outside a famous pub had 20-30 murals of famous (northern) Irish like U2, George Best, Liam Neeson and others, plus some political commentary as well. Very interesting.

Feeling fairly exhausted, we drove back home and dropped into a Thai restaurant around the corner from our house. Hadn't had Thai food for a long time so this felt like a slight taste of home. Food was decent enough, though not the same quality you get in Sydney. Back home where we whiled away the evening on laptops and smartphones as usual!Read more