So, I was in Belfast for a few days and had a great time. The weather wasn’t quite as bad as forecast and there was lots of interesting things to see. It was also pretty easy to get around, especially with the City Halls above as a central compass point.
My hotel was just around the corner from the Botanic Gardens. I did pick the hotel for this reason, although it was also super cheap and surprisingly nice. The whole botanics area is pretty cool with coffee shops, restaurants, book shops and a cinema, plus it’s only a 15 minute walk from the city centre. I would definitely stay there again. The garden itself wasn’t too big but had a nice Palm House and tropical house, rose garden and lots of pretty flower borders.
On the other side of the gardens is the Ulster Museum, which was handily placed to save me from the rain. It’s a proper good museum with loads of stuffed animals and random artefacts from around the world, plus there’s art galleries and a big section on Northern Ireland’s history. It’s a really interesting building too, with lots of different floors and passages to wander round. I was disappointed the costume gallery was temporarily closed but they did have a special Game of Thrones photography exhibition, which made up for it. The photos are from filming and production and the lighting and locations are gorgeous – definitely worth seeing. Plus everything is free!
St George’s Market is open Friday – Sunday with different stuff each day. I popped along briefly on Friday but had a proper visit on Saturday to see Tee and Toast. It was cool to meet Claire and see her cute and colourful stall in person. I ended up bringing that Titanic mug home for a souvenir. The Tunnocks one I have already and gets lots of use. The rest of the market is pretty good too, with some decent crafts and lots of amazing food. I had an enormous egg and chorizo crepe and a chocolate orange brownie and they were both awesome. I neglected to photograph either because they were just that good. You should absolutely plan your trip around this.
I’ll post about the Titanic Quarter and the Game of Thrones exhibition later. Here’s some cool street art I saw on my wanderings. You can also check out more Belfast photos on my Flickr.
