It’s Belfast time!
Bryan expressed interest in the Titanic and we happen to know a place
where he can get all of his questions answered—the place where the Titanic was
built. This works out perfectly because
Ker and I wanted to show them Northern Ireland.
It’s hard to explain to eople from home how different it is in the North. It’s hard to imagine that with an island so
small, that it can contain two distinct countries with such a turbulent
history. It’s better to experience it in
person. So, off to Belfast we went.
Now, I have been trying to get a picture of the Welcome to
Northern Ireland sign for a while. Even
though I got my phone out miles before the sign, I still missed it! Grr. The
border between the two countries is not well marked and the sign comes up so
fast without any warning that I’ve missed getting the picture EVERY time I’ve
gon up. Well, I live to try another
time.
Abby, Colleen and I have already had as much of the Titanic
Experience as we can handle, so we decided to do a little Christmas Shopping in
downtown Belfast while Ker took Bry and Crys through the museum. We had Ker set the GPS to a shopping center
downtown. The problem is that Belfast is
full of traffic and streets that don’t make any sense. Eventually, after waiting in horrendous
traffic for 30 minutes, I deemed us “close enough” to the shopping center. Since we weren’t moving anyway, the girls and
I hopped out of the car to find our shops on foot. This allowed Ker to maneuver the car out of
the heavy traffic and to head toward the docks. It was a win-win situation.
Our first shop was a cute early education boutique. It was chock full of stickers, learning
games, toys and gadgets. We really
wanted to buy one of everything! I know
that my elementary teacher friends would be itching to try out all the
goodies. I love little shops like this
one! It was a fun time.
We meandered through several shops. We even found an exotic food shop that had
many of our favorite American foods.
It’s fun to think that American food and products are considered
“ethnic” here.
Belfast is a large city, but it is not as pretty or
picturesque as most of Ireland. The city
is primarily been an industrial powerhouse throughout the centuries. This might explain the downtrodden and
sometimes dirty feel of the place. Also,
the people aren’t as nice as what we encounter down in the Republic, but they
are nice enough. There’s an impression
that Belfast is a serious place where serious people do serious work. I can tell that the city is trying to attract
tourism though. The shopping center is
new and very well decorated and there are many tourist friendly places to stop
and chat. These are very new and
modern—they even still smell of fresh paint.
The girls and I stumbled on a Christmas Market right in
front of the magnificent City Hall building.
It was filled with all the treats you can imagine. It reminded us of the Portland Saturday
Market minus the weirdos and overly patoulli scent if you know what I mean. I
forgot to bring my Northern Irish money so we couldn’t buy anything at the cute
little shops even though we saw some CUTE stuff. Even with that, it well worth the stop.
After a couple of hours shopping, it was heading on lunchtime
so I decided we should hop into a cab and meet up at the Titanic
Experience. It was perfect timing
because Ker, Crys and Bry were about to order lunch at one of the restaurants
inside Titanic Experience. We ate
there—I had the vegetarian option complete with the you-must-be-crazy look.
After lunch we headed back to the house to rest a little and
get in touch with the people at “home” to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving. It’s a little surreal to know that today we
are usually cleaning, cooking and getting everything ready for a celebration of
food and family.
Once sufficiently rested, we hooked the girls up with pizza and
unlimited internet privileges. This made
them exceedingly happy and they were practically pushing us out the door so we
could have an adult only night on the town exploring the Temple Bar area of
Dublin. Confusingly, Temple Bar refers
to both an area of town and a specific pub in downtown Dublin. So, when people ask to go to Temple Bar, we
kind of look at them and have to figure out if they mean the pub or something
else.
We arrived at 8:30 pm when people are just beginning to want
to leave their house for a good time.
So, the pubs weren’t so crowded with drunkards quite yet. I find that pleasant because loads of drunken
people are not my kind of thing. I find
them kinda pathetic. Since I was the
designated driver, I only had one pint at the first place we stopped in. I am much more entertained by the live music
offered at these locations. We were in
the audience for some great local talent.
I really liked the banjo/guitar duo.
But, what was even more fun was to see Bryan try and sing with the
street band outside the pubs. That was
hilarious.
We rounded the evening off with a stop at The Porterhouse
Brewing Company. This is a must see for
any beer lover visiting Ireland. Lots of
taps with an awesome guitar player who is skilled at getting the crowd involved
and singing. The building has many cozy
corners and funky seating so you don’t feel hemmed in. Ker and I will definitely be back. This might be the only incentive that will
convince Ker to come Christmas shopping with me this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment