BELFAST NORTHERN IRELAND

Day 117
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Wimbleton Tennis Day 2 Lleyton Hewitt goes to second round....
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Belfast, Northern Ireland

Here we are..in Northern Ireland! Ireland that's not really Ireland! That is, it's the northern part of the country but is the part that is part of the UK and not Europe. A bit confusing really...but if you get it wrong, your'e sure to be corrected!!!

We caught the ferry at the Stranraer terminal in the south west of Scotland after leaving Edinburgh (bus) at 10am yesterday (Monday) and arriving in Glasgow at 11am and straight to Stranraer to catch the ferry to Belfast.

It was weird thinking about going to Belfast..not sure why. I think it's because i still associate it with danger...and the IRA. Must be my era.....

Anyway, it's not like that at all. Well not quite. There are still armed police cars with steel netting around the lights on their vehicles..and police outside the pubs at night.

Belfast is where the Titanic was built. They don't seem to capitalise on it much, or at least they didn't until recently. Apparently there's an exhibition in the US at the moment which highlights this very fact.

We knew this was the home of the Titanic though. At least, Greg knew! And as we approached in the ferry we could see the cranes where the Titanic was built looming up at us!

It's also very British (of course, given the history). Has British prices, British street names, British pub names and British newspapers....and on t.v only British weather (Southern Ireland doesn't count!)

But what does one expect..it's British!

We searched for accomodation in a street we thought had heaps, University Street, and the only thing available was flats to let! We did want somewhere to stay for a while..but not quite that!!!!

Everything else in the vicinity we were looking was booked out! What to do? We took the first place we saw, a B&B and booked it for one night as there as nothing else available and after that we decided we'd had enough of cities and we'd just head straight for Kilkenny in Ireland..a country town in Ireland.

So we wern't in Northern Island for very long..

We had a great dinner at Maggie May's though..(the irish stew was YUMMY!) and we also saw a sign for a stand up comedy night that night at the Empire Hotel which we headed for at 9.30pm...

Just one thing..at 11pm..after drinking our Irish whiskey's we found there was no comedy!!

Until we went outside..and realised it was on the top floor of the building..so yup, the comedy act was on us. Duh...

Definately need that rest in the country side..