Day 94 - Belfast

April 4th 2013

Up at 4am. Bleurgh. We tiptoed around the flat collecting bits and bobs and then made our way to the station for the first tube of the morning. The District line. Snoooooze.

E-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y we arrived at London Bridge and found our train to Gatwick. A short attempt was made at getting coffee, but they were far too slow, so we had to hop on the train without. Luckily for us because we had found a slightly earlier train we had much longer at Gatwick for a proper breakfast.

We grabbed ourselves some Pret porridge and had a short wander round. As we waited for our Gate to be called we realised the men walking past us in the same jumpers were in fact London Irish rugby team. So pretty. Sigh.

We made it to our plane and over to Belfast nice and quickly. I managed to miss take off as I fell asleep almost as soon as I sat down, which is a shame cause that's my favourite part, sympathy please.

Upon arrival we decided to grab a coffee before we left, however Claire was left waiting in the car while we were waiting at the most inefficient Costa EVER. I honestly do no understand how it took them as long as it did. Seemed like a lot of queue jumping which displeases me greatly.

Finally we were with Claire! YAY! Things dropped off at her house, we went into town to get some food before visiting Titanic Belfast. The food was delicious, I seemed to have a Man Vs Food sized portion of chicken wings, but they were beautiful so I managed it. Yum. It took slightly longer than anticipated, so we ended up having to rush off to the museum. After a small detour, ahem Claire, we arrived.

It's an amazing place, and if you get the chance to go you really really should.

The photo was taken during a ride in the exhibit, telling of the workers and how they built the Titanic and celebrated its completion.

There were a lot of stories of the passengers, those that made it all the way through, those that died and those that narrowly escaped being on board.

The photo above was part of a story of a man who was travelling just to Queenstown. Once on board some of the other richer passengers wanted to pay for him to go all the way to New York. He was supposed to be disembarking to train as a priest - the bishop upon hearing of the other passengers' plans sent him this message, and he left the ship and survived.

Towards the end of the exhibit they showed these - the SOS messages sent off to other ships. Some complained that they were jamming the lines and they were trying to track other things. Others were ships telling them that they were on their way. It was so terribly sad. The last one is cut off mid-sentence and it speaks volumes. 

The exhibit takes a long time to get round properly, so we really needed some caffeine after finished. I actually got a latté, but really wished I'd got Lynsey's tea. Isn't the teapot lovely? I actually ended up having a cup of tea from it because Lynsey is lame and can't finish tea. It's a medical condition.

Look at my cake. Look at it. It was immense. I kinda wanted a hammer and chisel to thwack pieces off of it. Amazing.

We headed home where Claire's mum made some beautiful chilli, and we had a little relaxing glass of wine. Shortly afterwards we headed out into town to meet some of Claire's friends for a drink. The pub we went to was awesome, great atmosphere. If I'd been more awake I would have wanted to stay a lot longer, but it wasn't long before Lynsey and I's eyes started to betray our tiredness and Claire kindly spotted this and got us home.

Long first day, but a brilliant first day.

Stephie

xxx