Belfast City and beyond..

---

Well the journey to Belfast went really well - the beauty of having pre printed boarding cards makes airports much easier... Bus from outside brought us into the city centre and the hotel was a very short walk away - (well would have been short if we had taken the right road!)

The first impressions were that this is a very modern city and it was only on returning to the hotel after tea that we saw the very large imposing mural stating that we are NOW ENTERING LOYALIST SANDY ROW... really here then, though it was in our face not at all intimidating and the hotel is really nice and feels safe.

We spend the first evening familiarising outselves witht he city and found the city hall - spend some time standing on a spot in the range of the web camera and waving to Paul who logged on to see us!!!

We wanted to go up to the Atlantic coast and see the Giant's causeway - something I had wanted to see wen we used to cross over on the Cork Ferry witht he car - til we realised it is in Northern Ireland and saw just how far away it is from Cork. There were seeveral bus tours gouing to the coast but Sam chose the Paddy Wagon - bright green bus with pictures of Leprechauns smoking pipes!! I agreed and booked it on the phone but warned him that if a Leprechaun was drivingh I would not be going.

---