Tuesday, 1st March, 2005

Today is brought to you by the Northern Irish Tourist Board

OK, as threatened promised, here are all the photos from Kath and mine trip to Belfast. Much as I'd love to do a minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow account of what we got up to, I'm kinda busy today, so I'll just annotate the photographs.

If that's OK with yous

Just having got off the train at Cultra (That's Cultraw Kathie...) and on our way to see fab things at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

I think this is supposed to represent some kind of machinery, or something.

Ha! See? I'm not the only one — even some trains have names spelt differently than they're pronounced.

(That's "Maedb", it's pronounced "Maive")

Heaven!

How cool is this?!

Remember these? I had to use one in the South of Ireland once — couldn't get my head around it.

I'm a laydee! I'm a laydee! I'm a laydee!

Yeah, well this was just weird OK?

There were two of these — they're the things inside the little windows on buses that tell you where they're going. What was amazing was just how long they were. THey reached up to the roof, and they weren't ven fully unrolled.

OK, out of the Transport Museum and across the road is the Folk Museum — loads of little cottages and stuff with people living in them, recreatng the past. The smell of peat is wonderfully intoxicating

And the houses are amazing. This was a the kitchen of the priest, I think...

...and this was upstairs.

You can't quite tell how huge that fireplace was from this shot. Kath was standing next to it, and her shoulders were at the same level as the first 'step'

Cute!

This room was really eerie — it was like the owner had just got up and gone out, leaving all his clothes behind.

I didn't check to see if it was full or not

A rather beautiful range

This was yuk — it was one of the nooses used to hang prisoners. Really. The last time that was around someone's neck, they were dangling.

The church was lovely (and incidently, I remember being in there years ago) The interesting thing was the pews — they were enclosed with little doors, and some of them had pews facing backwards. Apparently, if you were wealthy, you'd hire a family pew at church. If you weren't, you'd stsand in the aisle.

Ah, inside the bank We met the Bank Manager, and he let us peek around his house...

This is his loo

After all that, we went to Bangor. Where the weather was yuk, but we did get a raindow.

And Kath bought me a pint I still can't stress enough how different Guinness is over there than it is in England. I wouldn't touch the stuff here, but I just can't get enough of it back home.

OK, just an arty shot of Bangor train station before we went home. I just thought the light was superb.

I little cat! Living at a train station! (He had a friend who came peeking out of that pipe, but I missed taking a picture.

These, my friends, are the best cheese and onion crisps in the world. So there

OK, a few shots of Belfast City Centre — this is the City Hall

This is Inst — a school that was on the BBC Restoration programme a couple of weeks ago, because they sold their fron yard to...

...these guys — the Belfast Tech. In my opinion a nasty nasty building that should be knocked down.

Um, just the Ulster Bank crest

A Georgian terrace near Queens' University...

...and the Uni itself. BIt fab eh? Not as old as it may appear though.

Inside the Botanic Gardens Palm House

An odd plant

...and the roots of this one were fab

OK, see this? This is the Ulster Museum...

...as is this

It's one of my favourite buildings — the way they've joined the new extension onto the old building. In the two pictures above it doesn't look like the same building, but in the third, it makes total sense.

Dresses!

More dresses!

Would you look at the sleeves on that!

Sorry, just the one more dress.

THe view of Belfast from the top of the museum. We actually had pretty good weather, every once in a while, when we were there.

Is he not fab?

My favourite pub in the world — the Crown in Belfast. It has little enclosed snugs that, apparently, 'ladies of the night used to ply their wares'

Whatever — the Guinness was gorgeous.

And this is the outside of it — you can't really tell from this, but the outside is ornate, to say the least. Come to think of it, so is the inside.

Waiting for the train home — again with the sunsets.

This was weird — the sun was shining through the spy-hole thing in my parents' front door, and making a little rainbow on the back of my coat

THis is just up the road from where I used to live — the weird thing is the way the windows cut through the different lines of bricks, at a slant. See what I mean?

And this is the very very old Motte and Bailey at the top of Dunmurry Lane. I was sure there was a little hengey-thing nearby, but we couldn't find it. A lot of building work has gone on up there, the whole place has changed.

And finally, the lake at Hillsborough.

The great thing is though, that I've got the fire going downstairs and if I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can smell the peat and it's like I'm back there