Westlife and Belfast

Yes, I am quite a big fan of Westlife. After 20 years, they go on touring again started in Belfast. Ciara & I were there on the second day and we did a bit of tourism in Belfast. Believe me, there are a lot of things to do there...

The city center has many shops, some of them are Irish shops, the Victoria Square Mall is a modern mall with a viewing round deck on the top floor... I love shopping there!

Belfast is the city where Titanic has been designed and made, so visiting Titanic museum including the Nomadic ship is a must. For me, it is a very interesting museum, to learn more about the background of building Titanic by Harland and Wolff, owned by White Star Line. We took a slow vehicle to go around in the ships fabrication area which was only a quarter of the real ship in that building. Then learning about the finishing touch of Titanic, the decks and eventually also about the maiden journey in 1912 and the disaster with the iceberg which lost 1517 lifes. Furthermore, there is an underwater movie showing the wreck of Titanic. Since Titanic was the biggest ship built that time, no port could provide a perfect dock therefore the passengers and goods were transported by the Nomadic from Southampton port to Titanic ship.

Friday morning, May 24th, we did a day trip to Giant Cause Way which is in the north of Belfast. Doyou know that Belfast is the city of Games of Thrones? The filming were taken around Belfast, there are many Glass of Thrones in the city and our first stop is the Dark Hedges, the big tress at both sides of the street which form a shade to the street itself and therefore it is darker. Then we passed the ruin Dunluce castle from 14th century located on the edge of a basalt outcropping in county Antrim. From that photo stop, we went to the oldest working distillery in Ireland, Bushmills Distillery and of course we had whiskey tasting: Black Bush, 10 and 12 years. I like the 12 years one. From the distillery, we went to the main destination, Giants Causeway which is called also the eighth wonder of the world, the basalt hexagonal stones. After admiring the basalt stones, we went to Carrick-a-rede Rope bridge. It is an old salmon fisherman bridge crossing from one island to the other. From there we passed the Antrim coast road and made a stop in Carnlough village, the fishing village. It was a full day trip and most of the places can be seen in the Games of Thrones. So I’m thinking to watch that series.

Belfast has variety of bars, pubs and restaurants. Some of them are quite traditional, like Crown bar and restaurant. The restaurant is upstairs and serving traditional Irish/ English dish. The bar is in national trust, meaning it is protected of its originality. It has some booths for about 10 people with door and full of colorful glasses. Other bar is Muriel bar, which has the women’s underwear as decoration. They served good and special cocktails. The Thirsty Goat has life music everyday, Dirty Onion has traditional music and served traditional food. Not to forget to mention about hotel Merchant restaurant, 2 courses for 23.50 pound and with the wine another 10 pound. I had fish and profiterole for dessert in the form of a duck, very beautiful!

Don’t forget also to see the jail and murals, which I didn’t have time yet... but I visited the Cathedral St.Anne with the spires, like in Dublin.

The Westlife experience was on thursday evening, May 22nd. We were standing in front of the stage, first to see the cover bands, The Rua then they played some music where we could sing along, dance. We danced Macarena the whole song! Then Westlife came after 21.00, they did Hello My Love, ofcourse and others songs with flash back and also Queen covers, which was quite surprising I think. It was a great evening, we had a bit of sore throat afterwards and we got a sugar free lemonade for free and I bought the merchandise: the program book and legging. We walked back to the hotel and felt very happy!