Life Spent yesterday in Belfast and actually doing that as a day trip wasn't as daffy an idea as it might sound considering that I was flying there and it's on a different bit of land to Liverpool. I approached the visit in the same way I do a museum or art gallery. I picked a couple of things I knew I wanted to do and stuck to those. That way I wouldn't be disappointed that I hadn't crammed everything in, and I'd have a reason to return because something would be new.
Inevitably that meant my first adventure was the red City Sightseeing bus. Although I know the best way to see any city is grabbing a map from the tourist information centre and walking, when there's only a limited time these are a great way of seeing the great span of the place in a short space of time. This took an hour and a half and featured one of the best live tour guides I've ever heard.
The tour takes in all of the main areas of Belfast and not just the city centre, which means that you get to see and listen to the history as well as the culture. Some of these red bus tours have a recorded guide which is fine, but can't really react to anything which is happening on the day. The live guide usually brings their own personality to the work. In Chester, that leads to a hard line to all of the duff new architecture which is being thrown up. In Belfast, you get politics and religion. Both with capital first letters.
The guide talked about the various political parties, paramilitary organisations and terrorist groups. About how there was a new one called 'I can't believe its not the Eye Are Aye...' As we drive up the Shankhill Road, stopping now and then at the world famous murals, he points out that the KFC have nothing to do with the UDF or any of the others, even though there seems to be a colonel in charge. He brings to our attention the British listening posts and the bullet proof CCtv cameras. On the Falls Road, diatribing about the evil of the wall which seperates the two most volatile groups and areas. About how the country hasn't been run from a parliament for two and a half years. About the infamous bank robbery and who might have been involved. It's a hair-raising time, but as he underlines, as we make a drop off stop on the Shankhill, tourism has replaced terrorism and that we're all sitting on an open top bus.
Belfast city is experiencing a period of investment and growth. The derelict or bombed out buildings are being demolished or refurbished. There is a real buzz about the place, a sense of moving forward, trying to put the past behind. The bus pushed through the shipyards, now piles of rubble or waste ground and I sensed that this must have been what it was like in Cardiff Bay before that was remodelled into the future. There is even a newish ice rink and ice hockey team, called the Belfast Giants. As the guide explained it's a good thing they didn't go with the original choice, the Belfast Bombers (true story).
From there, after a brief stop over at the BBC Shop (who knew they existed?) to buy all of the available Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy radio series on cd at startlingly cheap prices, I visited what seemed to be the next favourite tourist attraction, the City Hall. Almost as though the place had been designed by an idealist playing the Sim City computer game, this is directly in the centre of town, a giant, ornate, white building in Portland Stone. There are free tours of the inside. Having been to Liverpool Town Hall fairly recently, I wasn't shocked to find one Municipal Building looking very much like another. The only difference here is scale. From a giant domed ceiling designed as a homage to the Whispering Gallery at St Paul's Cathedral to a Great Hall were the carpet so large it's easier to cover it with a specially designed dance floor during gatherings than rolling it back up again. Needless to say there is now a photo waiting to be developed of me trying to look authoritative while sitting in the Lord Mayor's chair (look -- I was invited).
After another hour of looking around the used book and record shops, it was time to eat, which is when one of Belfast's really unique features came into play. With all the redevelopment came new shopping outlet and bar opening opportunities. So there are now lots of designer clothes shops and restaurants. These all seem to have names like Still, Hole or Giraffe. They appear proudly on signs hanging off the side of the wall. The only trouble is that with all their curtains and dark windows, its impossible to work out which they'll be until your directly on top of them. So at six o'clock at night when you've an hour in which to eat before going to the bus station to get the coach back to the airport, you find yourself walking half a mile up the road to find that something called East isn't a restaurant at all but a clothes shop which has about three skirts on display. I eventually fall into somewhere called Bourbon (which has a website) were I have the nicest Bangers and Mash I've had in my life. Real pork, real potatoes, real onion gravy. One of those meals you never want to finish.
So it was a massively enjoyable trip really. Even the travel was intoxicating. It's only the second time I've flown anywhere and there was still the giddiness of take off, my only expression to start laughing and become philosophical. As I looked out of the window this time, and watched the clouds drift over the land masses I started feeling disappointed that the great artists, the Turners and the Michaelangelos weren't alive to see what the world was like from above instead of below. I wondered if that was why Leonardo was so comitted to building a flying machine -- so that he could paint the earth as it appears from the heavens. How the history of art might have changed if they'd been able see us the way they must have imagined God saw us. But then coming into land last night, the ground covered in darkness but for a shimmering pattern of oranges and yellows, from street lights, headlights and house lights I also realised that ordinary man really is capable of great incidental beauty when he isn't trying to blow things up.
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