Belfast

This is day three in Belfast and the weather has really packed a sad. It is grey and wet and quite cold. Up to 30cm of snow is predicted for Northern Ireland later today although Belfast itself is only supposed to get flurries.

It is hard to describe Belfast in a word or two because it isn’t like any place I have been before. I can say that it is a Victorian City full of red brick and Portland stone buildings, monuments, churches and cobbled streets. It is small with around 350 thousand inhabitants with a further million in the surrounding districts. The people here are friendly, helpful and very proud of their city and its place in history. It was a great engineering and manufacturing centre but now has a downtrodden air. Despite this downtrodden air there are new developments going on and the city is trying hard to re-establish itself as a place to be.

On Sunday we did the city tour on an open top double deck bus. It was really good and gave us a good view of the city and its attractions, we visited;
· The Titanic precinct
· The Stormont (Northern Ireland Parliament)
· The City Centre
· Lots of churches and cathedrals
· The old prison and the Belfast Charitable Poorhouse
· Shankhill Road
· Falls Road
· Sandydown Road
· The Peace Wall
· Queens University

All of these are within 3kms of the centre of the city. The city is compact with lots of redbrick terrace and semi detached housing very close in as well.

Deidre went on a bike ride on Monday, the first time she’s been on a bike in years and she bike to Lisburn, a cute wee town outside Belfast and only 18 miles return. She never does things by half.

We are off to our ‘black tie” gala dinner tonight which should be fun although Deidre is a bit concerned about being cold.

Still no photos but maybe tomorrow.

The Journey

Well we have arrived in Belfast after 27 hours of flying and 8 hours of waiting in various airports.
The Dunedin Auckland trip was as eventful as it usually is and the wait for boarding seemed to last a long time. Neither of us had been able to get excited about the trip because the stress of the last 6 weeks at work but the excitement came back almost as soon as we got on the plane to London (NZ39). The flight to Hong Kong was comfortable and enjoyable and we were able to get about 6 hours sleep and read.

The stop over in Hong Kong was only 2 hours, we arrived at 5:45 am and rather than the bustling airport that we expected it was quiet and almost empty. Most of the shops were shut! As we boarded the plane for London the airport seemed to wake up.

The flight to London was long and very boring; we slept a bit, read a bit, watched TV more than a bit and wandered up and down. We got some spectacular views of snow and ice over central Russia.

All in all the trip was a lot of sitting, standing in queues and waiting, waiting, waiting. Everyone we meet was friendly and helpful except for the border control officer we meet at Heathrow . She was arrogant, ignorant and very very rude.

We arrived at George Best City Airport in Belfast at 7:00pm and arrived at our hotel about 25 minutes later.

We went out to dinner with other conference guests to a really nice restaurant called Beatrice Kennedy’s and we going quiet well until about 11:00pm local time then we just flagged completely so it was off to bed and straight to sleep. Probably the best sleep I have had in months.

Sorry no photos yet!! :-)

The Itinerary

27^th – 31^st March - Belfast


1st April - Portrush

2^nd April - Sligo Town

3^rd April - Galway City

4^th April - Bunratty, Co. Clare

5^th April - Killarney

6^th April - Kinsale

7^th April - Kilkenny

8^th April - Dublin

9^th April - Glasgow,

10^th April - Fort William

11^th April - Ullapool, Wester Ross, Scotland

12^th April - Bettyhill, 
 Sutherland


13^th APRIL - Dornoch, Sutherland

14^th April - Inverness

15^th and 16^{th April - Edinburgh}

17^th April - Newcastle on Tyne

18^th and 19^th April - London

21^st April - Hong Kong

23rd April - Home

The Countdown

Hi Everyone, it is only 11 days until we are off. The excitement is building although both of us are incredibly busy at work and at home. 30 hours on a plane only being able to eat, sleep and read is starting to look attractive.

Our itinerary is set now and we have paid or booked all our accommodation, rental car and airfares and I'll post it up in the next couple of days.

The first 4 days of our trip is in Belfast where I will be attending the AUDE (Association of Directors of Estates) Conference. I am really looking forward to catching up with old friends, meeting new ones and learning a thing or two. The both of us re quite looking forward to doing a bit of exploring in Belfast before we leave on our drive around the Emerald Isle.