The Tara is one of the very best hotels I’ve stayed in anywhere. Purpose built as a hotel, so well laid out with elevator next to reception, and breakfast room nearby. Brekky was truly excellent.
View from our hotel windowFirst seen on this trip over in Wales, a cunning way to provide cutlery in a pocket in a folded napkin.Simple really. This would be patentable in some countries.One of the little things that made this the best hotel on the trip. Two pieces of toast with my poached eggs, one white, one brown, interleaved. Served on restaurant grade crockery.
We set off for the Titanic exhibition, thinking that it would take a couple of hours. It took 5. Rather than drive there and park it was easier to take the train. We forgot to take pounds, we had only euros and credit cards. That’s all we needed.
Very pretty 1972 Triumph Bonneville 650. Oil-in-frame, conical twin leading shoe front brake that didn’t work at all. Lovely example.Streetscape just down from local Botanic rail station.Suburban train system is not electrified. Trains are diesel, apparently fitted out for comfortable long distance travel. We rode from Botanic just 2 stations to Titanic Quarter.Map of the Titanic quarterAnne walking toward the Titanic exhibition
I thought the Titanic exhibition was really terrific, and good value for £18.50. It showed how Belfast had the skilled workforce, industrial capacity and capital to built the largest three ships in the world, two simultaneously, due to its existing ship building, flax weaving, rope making, tobacco and ancillary industries. Good audio visual displays, a “ghost train” ride through the hull during its construction. All the stages of construction, launch, fit out, the fateful voyage, and even a theatre showing video of the real ship 3800m down in the Atlantic, taken in 2012. Also a lot about how the workers lived, all the main characters in the drama, the US and English inquests. Somehow though, no real mention of Captain Edward Smith’s decision, on a calm, clear night, to post a couple of lookouts and steam at 21 knots into an iceberg field he knew lay ahead. The Californian had recently radioed she was stopped, surrounded by icebergs, just 20 nautical miles north of Titanic’s track. Of course, most of us today would never have heard of Titanic if she had not sunk in such circumstances on her maiden voyage.
Compass rose on the ground floor. Entire tiled floor is a large scale map of the Northern hemisphere.Many of the engineering drawings are displayable. This is one of the simplest: rivet typesReproduction of a worksite in the hullSite of the parallel slipways. Hull 401, Titanic at left, hull 402 Olympic at right. They were launched stern first into the River Lagan. Olympic returned to the yard in 1912 after the loss of the Titanic, for retrofitting improved watertight compartments, hull strengthening and more lifeboats. She was converted from coal to oil in 1924, and finally scrapped in 1935. The third sister ship Britannic was fitted out as a hospital ship during WW1 and sunk by a mine.One of two travelling cranes built for Harland & Wolff in 1969 and 1974. Sampson and Goliath. SWL 850 tons. Sampson is much, much bigger than it appears here.After training back home we walked down to the Botanic gardens. Anne with red Tuberous Begonia at the Palm House.Owen, can you see a bumble bee in this photo?Thinking at Queen’s UniversityDinner here was really good.
