August 11, 2023 Belfast, Northern Ireland

At 7 a.m. this morning Zuiderdam was sailing just east of Donaghadee approaching Belfast Lough to enter the Port of Belfast in sunshine. The temperature was 15° C and a light wind, west 16 km/hr. As we ate breakfast up at Lido Market, we watched the ship turn into the wide mouth of Belfast Lough. After breakfast we walked for 40 minutes around Deck 3 watching the scenery. There was an oil rig being pulled out to sea. There were green and red buoys marking the narrow shipping channel approaching the port area. As Zuiderdam passed the cargo docks we could see that the Silver Sea Silver Moon was in port. She has about 800 passengers.

We saw the giant Harland & Wolff cranes – Goliath, which is 314 feet tall, was built in 1968 and Samson, which is 364 feet tall, was built in 1972. Both cranes are 420 feet wide. Just visible further down the harbour arm was Titanic Belfast, the museum built in 2012. The final maneuver was to spin the ship 180° to ease into the Terminal D1 dock so that she can sail straight out about 6 p.m. The gangways needed to be placed before anyone could leave the ship. In the loading area nearby were long wind turbine blades lying in cradles on the ground.

Meanwhile passengers were entering the World Stage to get stickers for their tours and wait for the tour to be called. Unfortunately today there was only one gangway for leaving the ship. So both people on tours and those guests just taking the shuttle bus into the centre of Belfast wanted to depart at the same time, causing a bottleneck which really only added less than 10 minutes for leaving the ship. Once through the terminal, the tour busses were lined up on the left and the $20 US roundtrip city shuttle busses to the right side. There were 32 people on bus number 1 and there were two more busses doing Belfast Highlights and the Ulster Museum. Our guide was Christy and the driver was Alistair. The clouds started to roll in during the morning.

Christy told us that the docks area, which has been shrinking since ship building is taking up less space, is still about 25% of the total area of the Belfast city limits. The populations is about 340,000 for Belfast and another half million people around the outskirts. All together the population in and around Belfast is half of the population of Northern Ireland. In 1888 Queen Victoria granted city status to Belfast. The thirty years of “The Troubles” were from 1968 to 1998 which was a conflict between Irish Loyalists and the British Government. A negotiated end occurred on Good Friday 1998 facilitated by a U.S. senator. Back in 1920 Ireland was partitioned with six of its 32 counties becoming mostly Protestant Northern Ireland. The remaining mostly Roman Catholic 26 counties later became the Republic of Ireland It has its own Legislative assembly building in the Stormont Estate. It is constructed of gray granite and Portland stone. The six columns represent the six counties of Northern Ireland. The grand avenue leading to the parliament, which is surrounded by parkland, is named Prince of Wales Avenue, after the future King Edward who opened the new parliament building in 1933.

The bus drove through an affluent nearby neighbourhood on its way through East Belfast to the city centre. We passed Belmont Tower; a statue of author, C.S. Lewis who hailed from East Belfast; and the murals on walls made by the Protestant Unionist Loyalists of Belfast. Next was the brick wall that separates the Protestant neighbourhoods from the Catholic neighbourhoods. We drove back through the east port to view the Harland + Wolff giant cranes; the dry dock where the hull of Titanic and its sister ship, Britannia were laid; and the Titanic Belfast museum opened in 2012. As we crossed a bridge there was a four meter high sculpture called “Thanksgiving” commissioned after The Troubles ended. Nearby is a large blue mosaic fish called Big Fish. Continuing we passed Harbour Office, the old Customs House, City Hall, St. George’s Market, Queen’s University established 1845, the Grand Opera House, the slightly tilted Albert Memorial which was built over an underground river and started to tilt shortly after it was erected.

After the panoramic tour of the city, the group had two and a half hours to explore the Ulster Museum which originally opened in 1926 and had an addition added in the late 20^th century. It was one of the most significant and costly cultural projects ever undertaken in Northern Ireland. Its five levels include an art gallery, a gallery of history as it affected Ireland, a natural history gallery. Hanging from the atrium ceiling are three large dragons made by Ulster Folk Museum Master basket maker, Bob Johnson. There was a section about the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada in the English Channel and the Spanish ships sinking in storms as they escaped to the north going around Scotland and Ireland.

In the science section there was a modern Periodic Table based on the original created by Russian Dmitri Mendeliev in 1869. Currently there are 118 known elements, but there is room for 170. The latest element added was Oganesson or OG. There were interesting fasts about many elements such as Helium comes from the radioactive decay of other elements. Brazil nuts contain 1,000 times the background radiation of radium, but is not dangerous. The Trano-uranium element created 26 new elements between 1940 and 2013. Close by were china and jewelry which used niobium, vanadium and titanium for the bright colours. A beautiful saucer had colours from anodized niobium and vanadium. There was a blue solid tube coloured by anodized titanium. There was also exhibits about electricity and how different gases give different coloured light when electrified.

There was time for us to explore the Botanic Gardens beside the Ulster Museum. The first thing you see is a statue of Sir William Thomson KNT, Baron Kelvin of Larcs (1824-1907) who is buried in Westminster, London. He discovered absolute zero and the Kelvin temperature scale. Further into the park is the Palm House conservatory surrounded by colourful flowers beds. There was a rose garden about 300 meters away, that was just past its prime, but smelled wonderful. Then it was time to meet at the bus. Everyone was on time.

On the 20 minute drive back to the ship, we passed Elmwood Hall part of the newer University of Belfast established in 1969. Then we saw a tall yellow multi-storied building that is the Queen’s University Hospital. The doctors are world class. During the Troubles, one doctor invented the artificial knee out of necessity because young men were being shot in both knees as punishment. Another doctor, a cardiologist, decided to miniaturize a bulky defibrillator and the compact AED was born. We passed a Starbucks. We were surprised to see a Tim Hortons within a block of City Hall on Donegal Square.

We returned through the terminal which had a nice gift store and Wi-Fi. We got on the ship and took our computers back to the terminal to upload the blog and check emails. The Wi-Fi was a bit slow but workable. After returning to the ship we climbed up to Lido Market for ice cream and read until dinner.

Cee Kaye and Brad had a mid afternoon tour that returned just before dinner so they came straight to the dining room. During dinner there was a heavy rain shower. The captain’s announcement warned of three meter swells during the night. The ship’s course will enter the North Channel after leaving Belfast Lough. Then continue into the Little Minch, the waterway between the Inner and Outer Hebrides, past the Isle of Skye and by sunrise we will be in the Sea of Hebrides going to Stornoway Scotland on the Isle of Lewis.

Tonight’s show was the second presentation of the Lincoln Center Presents Quintet of classical musicians playing music from around the world including Mexico and China and a composition by cellist Yo-Yo Maw and his trio.

Total steps 12,978

I am not sure if I will be able to post on August 14 when we are back in Iceland (in a small village), if not, then on August 16 when we get to Reykjavik (the capital).