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| River Lagan in Belfast |
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| St George's Market |
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| Albert Memorial Clock |
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The Big Fish
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Titanic Museum and one of the H and W Cranes
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Across the river you could see the new Titanic Area with its impressive new Titanic Museum building and the even more impressive Harlan and Wolf shipyard (where the Titanic was built) with its massive, but no longer used, big yellow cranes, Samson and Goliath.
Walking further out to the north on the west bank of the Lagan there is a fair bit of new development going on. Old warehouses converted to apartments, shiny new office buildings. In my youth I never heard anything positive about Belfast. It was the time of “The Troubles” and nothing would make you want to come here. Now I see lots of signs of a thriving city.
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The Merchant Hotel
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I walk through the main shopping area of town over to the City Hall which is a most impressive building. Victorian era and quite magnificent. The surrounding buildings in the adjacent streets are also impressive and show that even then this was a major city. For dinner that night I stop into one of the finest looking old hotels I could imagine, The Merchant. A truly majestic building with a beautiful old interior that I learned was built as the headquarters of the Ulster Bank in the mid 1800's and then only in 2006 converted to a hotel. I went inside sat in the ornate bar for a drink (quite expensive) and then moved over to the even more ornate dining room for dinner (quite reasonable).
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Belfast Cathedral
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Next morning I was up early and out to again explore the city. The Albert Memorial Clock again, the Custom's House, and Belfast Cathedral. Then over towards the Victoria Square shopping center. Just outside the shopping center is the Jaffe Memorial Fountain, an unusual and out of place object that was erected by an Otto Jaffe a German Jew who emigrated to Belfast in the mid 1800’s and who eventually became Mayor of the city. It is a memorial to Otto’s father who died in Nice but whose body was shipped to Belfast for burial, the first Jew to be buried in Belfast cemetery.
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The Jaffe Memorial Fountain
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The new Victoria shopping mall is just the same as all the others in the world today with all the same shops you get in England. The shopping mall does have one redeeming feature however, an impressive viewing tower above the mall that you can climb up to and view the surrounding city. That is worth a look for sure.
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Belfast City Hall
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Further up the road is the City Hall again and this time it is open, at least partially. The interior is just as spectacular as the outside and there was a nice exhibition about the city, its history and its people.
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The Grand Opera House
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On Great Victoria Street there is the Grand Opera House. Well known to all Van Morrison fans as it is pictured on the cover of his live album recorded there. It is a beautiful building.
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The Crown Liquor Saloon
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Just across the road is the Crown Liquor Saloon. A magnificent example of an old Victorian pub or gin palace. The pub has wonderful tile, stained glass and woodwork. It is actually owned by the National Trust but it is still operated as a pub. I should have stayed for a drink but perhaps not at 10 in the morning.
Back on the other side of the street is the Europa Hotel. This fairly recent 1970’s hotel has the dubious reputation of being the most bombed hotel in the world having survived 36 bomb attacks during “The Troubles”.
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Clifton House
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I checked departure times for the airport bus in the adjacent terminal and then set off to walk some of the neighborhoods. Due north of the Europa is the Clifton House a fine example of Georgian architecture. Then just beyond this I found myself in the New Lodge area. This, as I remember from my youth, was an ardent Republican area and even today there is no confusing it as anything but that. The murals on the walls, the graffiti, the flags flying and the memorials to casualties of the conflicts all identify the place as a fiercely Catholic Republican area.
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New Lodge Mural
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Wall murals have become a significant part of many neighborhoods in Belfast. I don’t know if they started with the troubles but they all seem to be related to that period and they are often quite militaristic. In addition to the murals there is the odd piece of recent graffiti stating “Britain out of Ireland” or “End Forced Strip Searches” or “Join Saoradh”. I thought "The Troubles" were diminished since the Good Friday Agreement but they are certainly not over and they are not being forgotten.
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New Lodge Mural
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New Lodge Graffiti
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Walking down Antrim Road and then up the Crumlin Road you get to the Crumlin Road Gaol. Again along with the nearby Shankhill Road and Falls Road are these are names from the news reports of the 60’s and 70’s. I went in the Crumlin Road Gaol and took the tour. It was an interesting view inside a Victorian Gaol that was actually in use up until 1996 and housed many of the Republican and Unionist prisoners of “The Troubles”. Eamon De Valera also was a prisoner there, as was Bobby Sands.
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Crumlin Road Gaol
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Across the road from the Gaol is the Crumlin Road Courthouse; an impressive building that is now derelict and up for sale (with planning permission for a hotel conversion). The Gaol and Courthouse are linked by a tunnel to facilitate transfer of prisoners between the two.
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The Unionist Neighbourhood
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South of Crumlin Road I get into the Shankhill area and this is a Unionist area. Here the wall murals promote the British military and the ties to the Queen. The flags flown here are all Union Jacks.
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After walking up the Shankhill Road for a while I turned south onto Cupar Way which was the location of one of the Belfast Peace Walls. Walls like this were built to separate the Republican and Unionist communities in the late 60's early 70's. This one still exists today along the side of Cupar Way. It is covered with crude tagging.
At the end of the Peace Wall it ran into the Falls Road and I was now back into Catholic territory. Again here we had murals depicting the Republican point of view. It is here that there is the mural of Bobby Sands the Provisional IRA member who died on hunger strike in 1981 in Long Kesh Prison just outside Belfast. Incidentally he was for some time in Crumlin Road Gaol and it is there where he was married in the Governor’s office (all a part of the tour).
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| Belfast Peace Wall |
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Bobby Sands Memorial
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By then I was tired of walking (over 10 miles according to the iPhone) so I took an Uber over to the other side of the river and the Titanic Museum. On the way I asked the driver to locate the George Best mural. He was a Belfast boy and a brilliant footballer but he couldn’t handle his alcohol. I saw him once in Aberdeen airport in the 1970’s and he looked terrible. Somewhere there is quite a large mural of George but we could only fins a small one. Still it was nice to see something not remembering or promoting the Unionist-Republican differences.
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George Best
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The Titanic area on the other side of the Lagan is part of a new development near the old Harlan and Wolf shipyards where the Titanic was built. It has a new stadium and new office buildings and restaurants and of course the Titanic Museum. I walked around but didn’t go into the museum. It looks a lot more interesting from the outside and I didn't really have the time.
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The Titanic Museum
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In dry dock near the museum is the White Star Line's Nomadic, the last remaining White Star Line vessel (other than the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean). The Nomadic was used to ferry passengers from Cherbourg to the Titanic before it left on its fateful voyage, the Titanic being too big for the harbour at Cherbourg.
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The Nomadic
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That was the end of my tour of Belfast. I walked back to the hotel, picked up my bag, and walked to the bus station for the ride to the airport and back home to England.
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