Sunday September 1

Today we left Dublin and drove to Belfast, Northern Ireland, close to where we will depart for Scotland tomorrow early morning. We resolved to drive off what they call the motorways and instead wander the back roads along the coast of the Irish Sea. No such luck. We got lost time and again, but it was all in fun and we arrived in Belfast around 3pm.

Interesting that there was no border guard, no passport check, no nothing when we crossed the border from Ireland into Northern Ireland. 

We were lucky enough to have reservations at Dukes at Queens, a quaint hotel with modern amenities and the usual large and well-appointed bathroom with absolutely no storage. After having spent many hours in the car, we decided a long walk was in order, so we headed for City Hall. This is an  enormous and beautiful building with a memorial to Queen Victoria in its front and a Jumbotron in its side yard that was showing an international steeplechase competition.

Belfast City Hall

Then down to the waterfront to see what that looked like.

Belfast is pretty dark and very dirty. There's a lot of cigarette smoking in the UK, much more than you would encounter on the streets of the US. I watched a young man take a small packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, choose one to light and smoke, and throw the empty packet on the sidewalk. I can't remember the last time I saw that happen.

We returned on foot to the Dukes at Queens for dinner since we saw very few open restaurants and nothing of interest during our walk. We had low expectations about dinner and were very pleasantly surprised by a delicious meal in seedy-ish surroundings. Then to bed for a 4:15am wakeup call to make sure we get to Larne, 45 minutes north, in time for the ferry at 7:45.

8874 steps today, 4.5 miles or so.