Titanic

Sunday, March 06, 2016
Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Mother's Day in the UK! After a yummy breakfast of eggs and tomatoes, toast and a cuppa, we headed off to the Titanic Quarter. Our booking was for 10am and we arrived right on time. I had to use my phone as the GPS had no idea where Titanic even was! We spent a great couple of hours walking through the different galleries and seeing the difference that ship building made to the people of Belfast. In it's heyday, Harland and Wolfe employed thousands of workers, They not only built the ship but they had other businesses that made all the wooden furniture and large factories of upholsterers that made and covered all the chairs, lounges etc. It was really big business. Titanic took 3 years to build and fit out at a cost of 1.5 million pounds. I'm not sure what that would be in today's cash but I'm guessing about half a billion dollars would be close.

At 12:40 we went into the ballroom for afternoon tea . It was all set up with lovely furniture, fittings, flowers etc. Very posh... We had tea, sandwiches, cakes and scones with jam and cream. There was a staircase just like that on the ship and we were allowed to take photos. Graeme and I snuck up for a quick photo and I even managed to sit the 'kids' on the railing. They were very excited as they had only been through the exhibition before and not into the ballroom.

After afternoon tea we wandered into the actual dock where Titanic was built. The ship is marked out on the ground so you can get a feeling of ow big it actually was. There are lifeboats marked along one side and I wanted to get a photo from a little bit higher so I jumped up on low seats that are around the area. I overbalanced and fell straight off the seat backwards. I landed on my rear end and my feet went up over my head. I shrieked with laughter and quickly got up and looked around to see if anyone had seen me!! It appeared that no one had but then I looked up at the exhibition centre and there are windows all the way down so it is VERY likely that I was observed from inside the building . I banged my head a little and took a bit of skin off my elbow but luckily my extra padding protected all the vital bits! Graeme missed all the excitement because he was walking away from me toward the bow of the ship. He was very nice and didn't ask me to do it again so he could watch, although he did mention that he was sad that he missed it :) Masochist!

We started on the drive back to Dublin and after dropping our car back at the airport, catching the airport bus into town, we found our accommodation which is directly opposite the bus stop where we have to be at 7:00am to get to the ferry port for the 8:05 sailing.

We dropped our luggage into the room and promptly trashed the place by turning it into a laundry and took off into the city for our last bit of Irish pub music. We found a place called The Celt and had a luscious dinner and great music. They banjo guy was amazing!


We've had a lovely couple of days in Ireland and hope to get back here one day.


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Comments

Darlene Turner
2016-03-08

Thanks for the link! I've read all the blog and loved the pics!! Glad you didn't break your hip lol! X

2025-02-09

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