Belfast, continued: Exploring the city

We slept in on Sunday, tired after a day of sightseeing (and sprinting up hills) and a late night watching episodes of a great BBC show called Merlin (pretty amazing). When we eventually got up, we decided to stroll through the Botanical Gardens next to Queens before heading downtown to explore. The gardens were lovely, although it was still too early for some of the parts, but daffodils and other early spring flowers were all over. We went into the tropical building and saw fishes and Spanish moss and other cool plants and things that made us think of Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. You walk around the upper level, and there's a path running down that takes you into the lower section, but it was closed off, and we were sad. Next, to the greenhouse to see lovely flowers all in bloom. A mother and her little boy came through, and she was in raptures, "Aren't they lovely, just lovely." The boy, however, had screwed up his face, "It's a horrible smell, ugh..." This exchange repeated itself several times, all in their charming accents. The accents of the North are closer to Scottish accents, which was interesting to hear after getting used to the accents here. Sidenote: yesterday, at mass, we had a visiting priest who is from Ireland but is currently in the Diocese of Atlanta, so his accent was SO Americanized, and it was very strange to hear. Not, of course, that I never hear American accents, but every now and then his Irish accent would slip back in, and the combo was strange.

So, after seeing the plantlife we went downtown, which is very large and full of a mix of shopping and historical buildings. During our explorations, we came across an alley-thing with a statue mounted on the side of one of the buildings in it, so we went through the muralled (as in, covered in paintings) tunnel to explore and found it was of Jim Larkin, who we had never heard of, but who I found out later is pretty famous for his work in the labor movement. Fun stuff. We also saw Prince Albert on the clock tower, which leans a bit due to the river running underneath it, and lots and lots of rainbows! We pondered the Salmon of Knowledge, whose scales are covered in pictures of historical people and events, and then it started to rain, but we found ground chimes!! A square on the ground of nine metal squares that each produced a different tone when you stepped on them!! It was great!! We made some lovely songs, but then it really started to rain, so we sprinted to a nearby courtyard to hunker under something for a while. We headed to Victoria Square, which is a semi-indoor, semi-outdoor shopping mall with a huge dome that you can go up into and see all around the city, which we did. We also went into the swanky department store and picked out furnishings for our apartment next year before heading to the really great toy section, where we were entranced by a jet-propelled penguin that can magnetically catch baby penguins on its back through the cunning use of magnets that they had in a small pool of water. I still rather regret not buying it. We also saw a beautiful building that, inside, had a beautifully painted dome - and it was a Tesco's supermarket. Ah Belfast.

We went to mass at 5, and after that we went to wander a bit more and find some dinner. The catch: downtown Belfast pretty much shuts down around 6 or 6:30. No one is around. Stores are no longer open. There are no restaurants except for a couple expensive ones. What to do? Well, we headed back to Victoria Square for some good ol' Irish Chilis. Yep, you heard me. It was really good. We wound our way home after that, passing one store in particular that had really stellar mannequins (see shutterfly), and stopped in to the Crown Pub for a pint, which is a cool, cozy little place with little booths that have doors. The next morning I was catching an uber-early bus, so we woke up at some obscene darkish hour of the morning and I headed off for my long, long bus ride back to Galway. It's always nice to get back, even though I had a really great time exploring Belfast and especially at the Giants Causeway. Whenever the bus passes the Oranmore stop, I know we're almost there! I'm so lame.