Belfast

The next morning, I woke up at 5:20 to lights flashing and an alarm blaring. Of course, the first thing I thought of was “the most bombed hotel in the world.”  And then the more realistic thought of a fire. Since we were ten stories up, that was even scarier. Before panicking, Debbie called the front desk, and they said it was a false alarm. Whew. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep after that. And for some reason, everyone in our group went to breakfast early!
 

We took the bus to the Titanic Experience, a massive building on the site of where Titanic was built. The first floor of the museum is pretty much just for crowd control, with exhibits on what Belfast was like in the late 1800s. Mildly interesting, I guess, but nothing like the actual Titanic stuff. At the end of that hall, there’s a gantry style elevator that takes you to the top floor, where there’s another line for “the ride.”  To keep the area moving, some of the docents will tell you to skip the ride. Don’t skip it! The ride is a gondola style car hanging from the ceiling that takes you through scenes and sounds of workers building the gargantuan ship. It’s noisy and hot and a clever way to give you a sense of how difficult it would have been to work on this. After that you walk through various exhibits of designing and building the ship. And furnishing it. Then the debut. And the sinking. And the aftermath. (It’s very moving.) The next section is on the search for and discovery of the wreckage.  After that, they top it off with a 3-story multimedia show with a huge model of the Titanic hanging from the ceiling. Projected on the circular walls around you are scenes from different stages of the Titanic’s “life” from design to building to setting sail to sinking to discovery of the wreckage, all set to a great soundtrack. It’s about a 15-minute show, and you can walk down the stairs during this to get different viewpoints. If you’re interested in Titanic, it’s worth watching the whole thing. And at the bottom floor of this space, they have artifacts that were found floating in the water after the sinking. (The museum considers the wreckage site sacred and won’t display pieces that have been brought up from the ocean floor.) Unfortunately, we were on the clock and had to meet our group at a specific time, so we did not get to see that whole show. If we had known, we would have skipped the first floor Belfast pre-Titanic section. 
 

When we got back to the bus (we were the last ones), Lolly gave us a quiz sheet that we were supposed to answer and return at dinner. It covered the whole trip, and we were able to answer about 90% of them immediately. But there were some questions that I didn’t remember seeing or hearing about.
 

Mark drove us to a church, dropped us off, and said goodbye; he was driving back to London for another tour. Lolly took us on a walking tour of downtown Belfast that ended back at our hotel. 
The afternoon was free time, and we walked around to see City Hall and their stained glass windows (not by Harry Clarke.) We stopped at the Grand Central Hotel Observatory bar, 23 stories up. It’s got great views (north and south; the east and west ends are blocked off.)
 

Then we went back to the Europa and finished the “test” looking up the answers we didn’t know. Like “The Clancys were known for wearing what?” Flat caps, plaid socks, or woolen jumpers. I’m sure she played some of their music but I didn’t remember a discussion of their clothes! I Googled the Clancys and on all the album covers they were wearing wool sweaters. So I Googled “woolen jumpers” and the photos were of sweaters! (Sorry, Lolly, you’ll have to change this question on future tours!) 
 

We were the last to arrive at the restaurant (in the hotel), for our farewell dinner. We gave Lolly our test and sat at the last available table. That was our first time sitting with Lolly at any of the meals. She asked everyone about their wow moments. I told her the Blasket island was mine. She seemed genuinely surprised because it’s not a common choice. During dessert Lolly announced the winners of the test. Most people got them all right. (They looked up the answers they didn’t know, just like us - though some people knew a jumper was a sweater.) David won the tie breaker because he wrote in that Queensland was the last stop of the Titanic even though Cork was the one listed. 
 

After dinner Lolly surprised us with another musical show. This was so much fun, especially for me. An emcee, a woman fiddler, a male guitarist, and two dancers, (male and female). At some point they asked for a volunteer to take a dance lesson. I waited for someone else, but when it was clear no one else would do it, I volunteered. The male dancer gave me the lesson, with some steps and a broom dance that kind of terrified me. I did the whole thing without having a heart attack. Everyone thanked me for stepping up and doing it. It was fun, but I was really breathing hard by the end.  
 

After the show many of us, including Lolly, went to the bar area and chatted for an hour. What a great tour, and we were all sad that it was over.