[Holidays] Belfast

The weekend just gone saw me travelling to a different country. - well, technically anyway. I was in Belfast with a couple of others visiting one of my best friends, Hannah, who moved there in September to start her degree in medicine.

I've been to Belfast only once before. Four years ago I went there for a PhD interview, and despite being very busy I did get a bit of a tour of the place from one of the members of staff. Returning was an interesting experience; I got to see parts of the city that I missed out on the last time around, and see the many changes that have happened since that first trip.

Samson. Or Goliath. One of the two cranes that was part of the main shipyard in Belfast.

The two of them are actually listed structures! (Credit: David Brown)

Belfast is a city with history. A lot of history. Growing up in the 1990s I caught the end of 'the troubles', and witnessed some of the slow crawl towards peace. But there was a lot of what happened during the long conflict that I was unaware of, and I learnt a lot about it whilst I was there. The citizens of Belfast seem quite happy to talk about it, and even make light of some of it. I suppose there's no point pretending it didn't happen, but the openness surprised me somewhat.

Last time I was there the city was just starting to see some investment coming in, and this time the changes that had taken place were readily apparent. There was a new development on the site of the old shipyards, including a huge new museum about the Titanic, a new shopping centre in the middle of the city, and a couple of new museums. That, more than anything, speaks to the confidence in Northern Ireland that the end of 'the troubles' has in fact come to pass.

In the end we didn't actually see a lot of Hannah, who was busy writing an essay on the Saturday, but we dragged her out with us on Sunday to the Titanic museum. Which was fantastic, if a little pricey. It went through the whole story, from the building of the ship, to the outfitting, to the first legs of its maiden voyage back and forth across the channel. Then of course there was the sinking, the rescue operations, and the aftermath of the whole incident. There was a great focus on the human side of the tragedy, and it was a great way to spend several hours.

The Titanic museum is a fantastic looking building. The wings are modelled on the bow of the ship,

and the whole building can hold as many people as the Titanic could. (Credit: David Brown)

One of my favourite things about Belfast is its small size. It's got everything that a city should have, but it's all squashed in to a very small area, which means that you can see all of the different sides of the place very easily just by walking around. It also means that the city tour really does go around the whole city! We took one of the open top bus tours, which was very interesting. In particular, it went right through some of the most famous trouble spots, on both sides of the political/religious divide. I was shocked by some of what I learnt, and particularly struck by the sheer scale of the peace walls, which are still standing to this day. There was a lot of street art too, most of it of a political nature (unsurprising perhaps).

As well as all of that we also visited the old gaol, which has recently reopened as a museum. It was like stepping into the set of the Italian Job or Porridge! The tour was rather morbid in places, particularly when the tour guide took us step by step through the procedure for dealing with condemned prisoners, but fascinating. Then there was the indoor market, which was full of amazing food stalls, which we visited on both Saturday and Sunday.

The peace walls have now been around longer than the Berlin Wall was. They're a sobering sight. (Credit: David Brown)

All in all it was a great weekend. It would have been nice to see more of Hannah, but it was good to see her and catch up nonetheless. There was talk of making the lifesaving get-together an annual event (not always in Belfast mind), and I really hope that that comes to pass.