new year

Well this year I spent new years in Belfast with my mates and it was rather nice. I've become quite fond of Belfast in recent years although it does require an adjustment in some things. Attitudes in Belfast tend to be a bit different to those on the rest of the island, and often things belie the troubled past. Actually certain things mark it as quite different from other european cities. For a trivial example, my experience of customer service, in hotels particularly, tended to be below the standards I've experienced elsewhere. This time I went with quite low expectations, we were trying a new hotel this weekend and it turned out that it was great and above the standard I expected.

We had another one of those moments where I felt like a fop from the celtic tiger. On my first stay in Belfast (in one of their swankiest hotels) I ordered a sandwich and was asked what type of bread I'd like. I responded with "what have you got?" expecting foccacia, ciabatta, baguette, panini etc and got a quite dour "brown or white" in response. So I laughed at myself and had a sambo. This time we were having a hangover breakfast in a cafe and Beaker asked if they had any croissants left. She got the response "I don't know what that is"...but it didn't matter because we got that amazing fried bread. You just sometimes have to adjust your language to pre1980s Dublin and its fine!

While Belfast can't be easy for tourists in conventional ways - I was there four times before I managed to find the tourist office - which is rather effectively hidden- or anywhere that had a map of the place, and there is very little up-to-date info on the internet. It's actually quite managable to visit. It's very walkable with quite a compact city centre. It has lots of great shops and some nice restaurants and cafes. It's much cheaper than Dublin. Once you get past the initial dour responses the people can be quite pleasant and helpful, and even a tad more engaging than you'd tend to find in Dublin. Service is slower and places tend to be tardy with opening times being not rigidly interpreted, but it reminds me of how immediate we've become with things and so it helps me to relax a bit. It's quite hard to find the nightlife if you're not a local, but a few things come up if you look. Late opening seems to be only to 1am though. That was fine for us as we had a stash of booze in the hotel and ended up staying up until something like 4am.

I still haven't taken a black taxi tour, but we have resolved to book one in advance of the next visit instead of meaning to and then getting distracted by all the shopping possibilities when we're there. I really enjoyed getting away there, well worth a regular visit. Also I got lots of clothing bargains in the sales!

So that was new years and now I'm back to the grind! Have a whole heap of exams to mark by Wednesday... which as it happens is the day I return to work. I ignored them all over Christmas and now I'm paying the price!

So anyway happy new year, may it not fuck us up as much as last year!