On our last full day we set out to slow down and take it easy. So we bought tickets online for one of the two red Hop On – Hop Off tourist bus services and planned to use it to get to the Titanic Experience, Belfast’s biggest tourism magnet.
After a brief heavy rain we walked five minutes to City Hall and discovered that (1) the two red bus services are really one and (2) the bus we’d aimed for was full, so we’d have a bit of a wait.
When we finally got going we got the usual tourist highlights (“Belfast’s answer to the leaning tower of Pisa” – we have one of those in San Francisco).
We hopped off at the Titanic Experience only to learn that the earliest tickets available were for two hours later. It was lunchtime so we bought the damn tickets and headed out to catch the next red bus for the rest of their tour. And after another long wait we did just that, an hour’s worth of places we’d seen yesterday though the dueling Catholic and Protestant murals in West Belfast included some that were new to us.
We hopped off again one stop before city hall for a wonderful lunch in the outdoor dining area at Mourne Seafood, then just missed the next red bus departure and sat for another half-hour.
When we finally reached the Titanic Experience for the second time, it proved to be worth the wait: a series of exhibits that progressed from Belfast’s era as a city of Industrial Revolution linen mills and exploitive labor conditions to the rise of shipbuilding and a skilled, more prosperous workforce. The era of steam brought further growth capped by the construction of the Titanic and her sister ship.
Here we stepped into gondolas that swooped gently from the superstructure to the lowest levels to see the construction of a large ocean liner, hearing the workers’voices and a hint of the noise of assembling and riveting a steel ship.
Back under our own foot power we saw exhibits about the tragic end of the Titanic’s maiden voyage that never reached New York, the stories of some who survived and others who didn’t, the formal inquiries that followed, and finally the discovery of the ship on the ocean floor 73 years after its sinking.
By the time we left the last red bus of the day was long gone, so we returned to our hotel by taxi.
Bill travels 
Sounds like it was an exhausting day of much waiting but also worth it. I’ve not visited Belfast, so will add the Titanic Experience to the bucket list.
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