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| Bushmills Tour with Steven - after the free samples. I had a shot of Black Bush. When they expand the tour to include the mechanics and design of the bottling plant, I'd like to take my husband here. |
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| "Due to Phenomenal Demand, EXTRA DATE?" This is my first photo in Belfast. I only had a half day on my own here before going off to the gig in Rush. So everything I saw was within walking distance of the hotel or on the bus tour. Spotted this irresistible reason for a return trip on my way to an Internet Cafe that turned out to be defunct. Instead, I found Backbeat Music Exchange with all the great punk and new wave vinyl. |
| Without directions from the hotel clerk, without tour map, without even an Internet search...I left my hotel and walked straight to this place. It has long been on my list of places to see. |
| Tour Office Gift Shop: No Roll Back here, oddly enough. |
| Hope this band scores an indoor club gig sometime. But everyone pays their dues with some busking, don't they? They said they would give "Dearg Doom" a try when I asked, but I never heard anything I recognized. I really think I should have gone with requesting "Daybreak" instead. |
| Stephen suggested that I take the Belfast City Hall tour in the afternoon. Now, I've worked at a City Hall, but it was built in 1974 after the older 19th-century, milled wood, Italianate beauty burned down mysteriously when a zoning ordinance rubbed up against a rich corporate contract. My ground-hugging, single story City Hall, located three blocks away on less desirable real estate, was 40 shades of beige. Cold coffee in cracked carafes, shag carpeting straight off the Brady Bunch, and the rattling of broken-bladed rotary fans stirring piles of forgotten reports and the grease- and dust-coated slats of venetian blinds. Not that an opulent building like this in my part of the world wouldn't be filled with politicians in its heyday. It's just that business hours would be different and the employees would have names like Dorabelle, Singapore Lucy, and Annamae "Big Toe" Tucker from Tulsa. |
| This statue reminded me of Stephen Boyd in the role of Messala in the 1959 William Wyler epic Ben Hur. Can't remember who it is. |
| The routine is: the tour guide picks some poor slob from the group and makes him model the Mayor's robe. We were all in luck because she found somebody who -- halfway down the chamber -- morphed into a male model on a Milan runway. I must say, he did an excellent turn on the catwalk. There may have been vocal encouragement from the female American contingent. |
| Reminded me of the historic district and many great old buildings in Seattle, Washington. There's a whole page of red brick to follow. |