Having not been away from home for what seems like forever now, we had a trip across the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland, staying in Belfast Cathedral Quarter. I’m of an age that I was brought up on daily news bulletins documenting the troubles in and around this city and had only previously visited for business reasons. It was time to play the tourist and investigate what the city has to offer. Research beforehand gave me a list of places to go and things to see or experience but there wasn’t really time to do all of the suggestions. The Titanic museum was a must do excursion as was a walk through the Falls Road and Shankill areas to get a feel for the real Belfast.

One thing that is really noticeable is the sheer volume of ‘street art’ that is omnipresent and hardly a wall space is not adorned with it. Depending on where you are then the content will vary from quite artistic pieces through to sectarian murals commemorating their sides ‘heroes’!

The architecture varies as in most cities from the old industrial building, through ‘art-deco’ right up to modern glass fronted towers. Many of the buildings can be seen stood together having been designed and built centuries apart.

One of our intentions was to avoid the ‘plastic’ modern pubs but instead to search out the more traditional type of salon that are usually tucked away from the crowds, I’m glad to report that we did find some and of course sample the Guinness.

Four days wasn’t really long enough to take everything in but there’s enough left to make another trip sometime.