Wednesday, May 10th, 2023 Belfast, Northern Island
Today we took a short flight from Glasgow to Belfast, specifically to visit the Titanic Museum. Our grandson Noah has a particular interest in the Titanic and so he is very excited, Sandra and I were lucky enough to visit the museum last year so it’s the second trip for me and third for Sandra who had been previously. After the nightmare of yesterday, when we got all the way to the gate only to be turned away due to Laura forgetting her ID, we finally boarded the small turbo-prop plane for the 45-minute hop over the Irish Sea to Belfast.
Uber let us down for the first time when we tried to request a ride from Belfast airport to the museum, we could not get a driver to commit – I thought this was very strange. So we had to join the really long line at the taxi stand where cars were pulling up regularly, it was still about a 45-minute wait before we could take the 10-minute ride over to the museum.
Titanic Belfast is a visitor attraction opened in 2012, a monument to Belfast's maritime heritage on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard in the city's Titanic Quarter where the RMS Titanic was built. It tells the stories of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank during her maiden voyage in 1912. The building contains more than 130,000 sq ft of floor space.
The museum building sits in the dock area in a large open concourse, the front is designed to be symbolic of a ship’s bow forging through the ocean and it’s aimed right down the middle of the slipways used for the Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic – it’s very impressive. I had pre-booked tickets; we were a bit early but had no problem gaining entry – it was not very busy.
The story of the Titanic is excellently depicted as you progress through the museum; the boomtown that was Belfast at the start of the 20th century, a ride through the shipyard aboard a mini-car, the launch, the fit-out, the maiden voyage, the sinking, and the aftermath. There is an excellent surround-screen room – you stand in the middle and are able to look around at each area of the ship as the room appears to elevate from the very bottom all the way up to the bridge, it's amazing. Reconstructions of the cabins contain authentic furniture and fittings from the period and amount of documentation and other memorabilia, including a life jacket from one of the survivors, is very impressive. Towards the end of the tour there is a room where you can stand on a gantry overlooking the final resting place of the Titanic, it’s very well done. We had a nice lunch in the museum café and of course Noah had to visit the gift shop. Before Leaving we took a walk out onto the shipyard area where the Titanic was built, there are marking on the concrete to show the various elements of the ship, lifeboats etc. The huge Harland and Wolf gantry cranes (Samson and Delilah) could be se in the distance. Walking all the way to the end we could see the actual spot where the mighty ship fist slipped into the water.
We took an Uber (no problems this time) into the center of Belfast to pass the time before our flight back to Glasgow. The weather had turned a bit ugly with quite heavy rain, making it difficult to do much additional site seeing – we found a mall and did some window shopping then headed to the Europa Hotel bar and settled in for tea and snacks before heading back to the airport.
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