It’s been two weeks since my last post – yes, I have gotten very bold of late and intend to be better in the weeks running up to Christmas. What have I been up to? Been up to me eyes, that’s what!
I’m going to post about my trip to Belfast for a weekend in October (9-11th to be exact…yes, it’s taken me this long to get a post up). Myself and my lady friend wanted a quick city break, with no flying involved and we came across an excellent idea on lastminute.com called ‘Top Secret Hotels’. The site gives you a 45% discount on a five star hotel, but they don’t give you the name of the hotel until after you pay. We chose Belfast and were delighted to hear that we got to stay in the Hilton for a cool €180, including breakfast. Score!
We took off on the Friday afternoon and, surprise, surprise, found the M50 to be the most difficult part of the journey. My poor foot was killing me from all the clutch work, but my little Toyota iQ dealt with the task admirably. Things sped up considerably when we got onto the M1 and we found the roads around Co.Louth and South Co.Down coming up to the border to be lovely. It dries up once you hit the border though, and Irish sign posts disappear to be replaced with signs for bargain furniture and money exchange. I had to begin to guess speed limits as signs are in miles only and the iQ is in Kilometers. As we neared Belfast, we stopped at the Newry roundabout for some McDonalds and rushed back to the car and back onto the M1 as it was getting dark and cold. The iQ’s seat heaters came in very handy at that point, warming up our cold bums as we gingerly made our way up a very dark, and dangerous M1 towards Belfast City. It really isn’t a journey for night time and my eyes were killing me when we finally arrived at our destination.
Once you reach the city, it’s surprisingly easy to find your way around and the one way streets led us past the Belfast Eye – You can see the Hilton’s neon lights in then distance. We found the car park for the Hilton quite easily, but couldn’t find our way to the hotel, and with heavy bags on our backs, we were getting cranky! We finally made it into the Hilton’s reception and thought that it looked like a lovely hotel. We sped up to the 5th floor on the extra fast lift after checking in, and were pleasantly surprised by the room that awaited us. We had a lovely view over the waterfront and had very comfy surroundings for the weekend ahead. We settled down for the night, but not before we filled out our breakfast order for room service. It was great – hang the order on the door at night and breakfast magically appears the following morning at 10am!
We spent a good bit of time on the Saturday afternoon browsing the shops. The Victoria Square would be the biggest pull for shoppers like me with a considerable amount of clothes shops like Topman, River Island, Urban Outfitters and House of Frasier all selling clothes at the local Sterling Rate. There’s also the Apple Store and a very cool Forbidden Planet where I was able to grab the new ‘The Return of the Dark Knight’ box set. We were heading back to see the Ireland and Italy match that evening so we only had time to stuff ourselves in a Gourmet Burger Kitchen and wander the streets in search of a bottle of wine (they don’t have the same number of Off License’s as Dublin does). Teenagers had taken over the city that evening, so we were much happier when we arrived back in the hotel for the night. We all know what the outcome of the match was (Ireland through away a 2-1 lead in the last minute, the game ended 2-2), so we watched some good Saturday Night television and drank a nice bottle of wine to forget our sporting woes.
We made it down for breakfast the next morning by 10am, our reason for not ordering room service again was that there was a better likelihood that I would get Hash Browns with my fry up in person. This assumption was proved correct and we feasted upon an obscenely good breakfast before wandering the shops again and taking off back home at 2.
The road home was much more pleasant in the light of day, and we decided to stop off in Carlingford on our way for some food and a toilet. Carlingford is a delightful little town in Co.Louth. We ate in a lovely Italian Cafe called ‘Malocca’s’ and had some pasta and then we grabbed some ice-cream in Maude’s before heading home. Our little iQ behaved itself for the whole weekend with the exception of a little complaint over the belts. The top of the belt has been falling in such a way that it blocks the door when it is shut. It’s something that one has to keep an eye on so that you don’t walk off with the car door left ajar. Other than that, I’m still really enjoying the nippy little car (we’ve nicknamed ours Stumpy 
)
Next stop, another trip to Kerry next week. Watch this space!
