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More edits coming on this post.
This morning we awoke in Belfast. Dale went to the Café for a light breakfast and to work on the blog. Margaret slept in after her faux birthday celebration last night.
We decided to go to La Veranda for lunch. We sat on the back deck and had beautiful weather. The food was good and we had a nice chat with one of the restaurant managers named Alen. He was from Croatia and he shared his thoughts with us about Oceania versus Regent and other subjects.
At 1:15 we went to Constellation theater and left the ship for our bus #22. The Pubs of Belfast tour kicked off with our irreverent tour guide showering us with one story after another of the history and current situation regarding Belfast and Ireland. Throughout you never knew what you could believe as fact. In fact, at the end of the tour he said there are two histories of Ireland, one that is true and one that may not be true.
In any case, our guide, with his very Irish accent, went off once in a while on a tirade of sorts but it was all in good fun. The bus took us on a quick tour of the city and then dropped us off in the middle of town. From there we walked the rest of the way, getting stories along the way from our guide. We stopped for about 30 minutes at a pub where we all got one drink (a pint of beer or a glass of wine). Then, more city tour and another pub where we got another pint. This was at a pub that is the oldest building in the city having been built in 1721. Hard to believe that this is really the oldest building in this part of the world. We figured that the city had been sacked a few times and all the buildings burned/destroyed.
Throughout our tour it was surprising to learn how many famous people came from Ireland and Belfast. But, the most interesting to us was the things that were invented here including Guinness beer, color photography, trans-Atlantic calling, a cure for leprosy, the tractor (a guy named Ferguson who also developed the first formula one race car), the submarine, the tank, the guided missile, the ejector seat and a heat exchanger that revolutionized alcohol making. This same technology also was the pioneering effort in air conditioning! By the way, Dale checked all this out to make sure it was true and it was.
Back on the Explorer we had our afternoon in suite snack (large shrimp) and a drink and called Michael and Karen that we met last night. We planned to take a look at their room and them ours since our next cruise had their Concierge D format and they were thinking of upgrading to our Penthouse A. We had fun looking at each other’s room and everyone liked both!
We had decided to go to La Veranda (called Sette Mare at night) for dinner.
Pictures coming later.